Complaint Review: AT&T - Tucker Georgia

While I have large amounts of proof, and could explain this in greater details for several hours, I will try to make this as brief as possible here.

A year ago, AT&T Advertising convinced me to sign up for a "special limited offer" program to increase my business traffic and reduce my advertising costs. I went to AT&T offices and spoke to a sales rep at length, where he explained the details of the program before telling me if I did not sign up immediately, the offer would be rescinded.

In fact pretty much every detail that he explained to me was a lie. I was told that it was a print ad only, which is why I agreed, feeling that I could write the ad in a way to attract only the clients that match my services. In fact, AT&T released the tracking number to 411, in apparently a high position, which resulted in numerous calls from half the state and well outside of my service areas. AT&T also posted a generic internet ad with only the company name and telephone number, and placed it higher in searches than a separate AT&T ad that I was also paying for. These things resulted in large numbers of unusable calls, which AT&T was adding to my list of charges.

As it was supposed to be a print only ad, I had no way of knowing that AT&T was going to start charging me for calls that occurred more than a month prior to the distribution of the directory. After receiving e-mails saying that I would already be billed for large amounts prior to the directory release, I attempted several times to contact the sales rep at AT&T, leaving multiple daily messages in his voice-mail. I never received any reply. After weeks of attempting to get a reply from the sales rep or his supervisor, I finally reached someone who informed me that the sales rep was no longer with AT&T, but that they were unable to help because they were not familiar with the program. They were unable to connect me to anyone who could help.

Months passed, and I had not yet received any actual bills. I had been told by the sales rep that I would be unable to terminate the contract, but that if I did not pay the bill for a couple months, AT&T would shut off the ad. Having never received any bill, nor been able to reach anyone who could deal with this program, I naively hoped the problem would go away.

In late May of 2009, not 6 months into the contract term, I was contacted several times in one day by several different offices of AT&T saying that I owed conflicting amounts of money for this ad. Some calls said I owed $5300, while others placed the total over $7000. From this point, started getting calls several times every day. I was finally able to get connected to someone who understood the program, and he claimed that he could look through the account history for unrelated calls to remove. He told me to tell any other calls that the account was under investigation. I never received any resolution to this. AT&T said their computers did show a log that I had called previously about this account, but that they did not follow up. Their computers also showed no record of any attempts by AT&T to send out any bills. They could not explain either of these. Feeling the matter was being investigated, I waited for some kind of resolution that never came.

From late May through the present, I have no option but to hang up on and return call every incoming call as I do not know which incoming calls are through the AT&T billing number or not. This is destroying my business.

I was later contacted by an "independent research company" who asked me to come in and tell them about my thoughts on the program. I went, and explained my issues in detail. They asked if I was willing to discuss this with AT&T to resolve the matter, and I said yes. I was told that someone would contact me later about this. Nothing has happened yet.

In September, another sales rep called asking if I wanted to renew the contract. When I abjectly refused, I was told I would need to come to the AT&T offices to sign a cancellation form. When there, I was told that the original sales rep was fired from AT&T for blatantly lying to customers and coercing them into signing contracts. I was given a phone number to call regarding this matter. When I called this number, I was told that they did not handle "ethical issues" and was told to go back to my sales rep.

If my bill in June was somewhere between $5000 and $7500, and I have been hanging up on nearly all incoming calls since, and AT&T sent me an e-mail stating my total billed calls for July were $119, and August was $17, and September also $17, then how is it possible that my total bill at this point exceeds $12,000? Nothing about this entire thing makes any sense, and it has completely assured the destruction of my company.

Also, when I asked when the contract would run out, I was told December 31 because it was a one year contract. If it is a one year contract, they how can they bill me for supposed calls from the previous October, prior to the release of the directory?

How can AT&T sell a program that apparently no one in their offices knows anything about?

If a sales rep who sold thousands of dollars worth of contracts was fired for bad business practices, why were those accounts not properly reviewed and those contract holders not interviewed for problems? It is clear that AT&T seeks only to abuse their customers, blatantly steal money, and hide behind mountains of offices and phone numbers to avoid dealing with issues that they are aware of and do not wish to deal with.

I have mountains of data and a solid case of misrepresentation from AT&T that AT&T admits having happened, yet AT&T is not willing to resolve this matter.  I need help with this.