Hello everyone,
I am having a big problem with AT&T because of a long distance charge that we do not believe to be owed for $56 dollars I believe.
Last year my husband and I were struggling to pay our bills so we were behind on most of our bills just barely managing to not have our services shut off. We received a past due notice and I've called them to make a payment. At that point we were about $187 dollars behind for three months behind and that amount also included a long distance charge of abour $56 dollars.
I tried to explain to them that our service was for $24.99 a month plus taxes and surcharges and that we were getting bills of $47 to $58 dollars every month because they included small amounts of long distance. My husband and I we both had and still have cell phones and we hardly ever used our home phone to make long distance calls. I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to deal with ATT customer's service but they are horrible and not only that but most of the time they have reps who don't speak good english. Nobody was able to help me out to correct that error until I spoke to a supervisor and he said that I was right and to not worry about anything that it would be taken care of. He said that I needed to pay at least $87.00 dollars out of the bill in order for us to not get our services disconnected so I gave them the $87 dollars. They of course still disconnected the service and opened a new account for us with only basic service. I was pissed because they didn't keep their promise to keep our service going and the funny thing is we were paying $24.99 for phone service with calling feautures and long distance. The basic service they switched us to was basic service with not even caller ID and they were charging us $46 bucks a month. Which obviously was double the amount we were paying before and with all the other services.
We stayed with them until march and then switched our service to comcast. In january my husband and I went to a financial counselor she helped us to set up a plan to pay everything off and we are paying all our bills on time and even have money left after everything is paid off. I've worked so hard to get to this point. During all these months I've been trying to get into an agreement with ATT. and I know I'm stubborn because I told them I was not paying them anything until the fixed the other account (long distance that we have already paid every month included in the bill)
ATT sent us to collection for the $100 bucks for the old account and I paid them what I believed to be owed and disputed the rest with a letter. that got us out of collection on that one and I was just waiting for the other bill from the basic service to come so I could pay it off and be done with ATT. Well a couple of days ago I got a letter from a collection company and I said oh good I'm going to pay them off. Well when I've talked to the rep she said that the account was already reported to my husband's credit. I told her how can this be if this is the first letter we get from you guys. I'm calling to pay you off but now I don't know what to do because this obviously change the situation. She said that I need to pay before october and that ATT will not delete it from his credit because it is a long distance account. I've explained to her that this is not long distance because for those 3 months we had basic service with not even caller ID. She said that's just what the account was showing and that it was not going to be removed but that she adviced me to pay the account to get it off collection and also to avoid more trouble with this account.
I don't know what to do... ATT is lying big time. I've called them right after I hung up with the collection and the supervisor said he was looking at the account while I explained our situation and that the charges were valid. Nobody seems to be able to help me and I'm about to pull my hair off my head.
Please help anyone?? Do I need to pay the collection to avoid the write off the lady was talking about? what does that means anyways?? I'm so freaking frustrated because ATT is lying big time and they are the big guy we are just another ant they can smash.
Please any advice would be much appreciated!
