CenturyLink Unethical bait and switch tactics from CenturyLink Nationwide

On August 4th, 2014, I ordered a bundle of DirecTV and CenturyLink Internet from DirecTV. The advertisement in the mail said that the DirecTV portion would be $24.99/mo, with the internet portion running $19.95/mo. I ended up adding a phone line which I was told would be $12.80/mo plus about $7.00/mo of taxes. I was told that my DirecTV bill would come from DirecTV and my internet and phone bill would come from CenturyLink. We had issues with our DirecTV bill, but you can read about that in another RIPOFF REPORT. This is about how screwed up my CenturyLink bill ended up and the SCAM that they are running. 

As you can see from above, my internet and phone bill should run about $40/mo. I was absolutely shocked when I received my first bill of $175.00. Of course I guess I should have been considering when the phone technician guy was at the house, he said that someone else would have to come back out to fix the quality of the phone line and that he had to run up the road to do something and would be right back. He never showed back up and no one ever came out to fix the phone line, which we  haven't ever been able to make phone calls out with. It only works with incoming phone calls and works with our security gate. I've spent nearly 20 hours dealing with CenturyLink trying to get this fixed, but still no one has come out to fix it and my bill is still screwed up. 

It is now October 15th. We were told not to pay anything until the bill was fixed, which we've been told 3 times now after our new bill came out and it still wasn't fixed. CenturyLink talked us into having the DirecTV bill added to them, which was a huge mistake because now they control that account too. We paid our DirecTV bill in full and now CenturyLink is trying to charge us for that too even though it's already been paid. This morning our internet, phone and DirecTV was shut off for non-payment, even though talked to them 2 days ago when we got our 3rd bill and it was still wrong. For just phone and internet we're currently $315.00 past due with another $140 due. None of that includes our DirecTV bill. 

My wife called today and the customer service woman that she talked to was so rude to her and told her that she needed to pay the $315.00 in order to get it all turned back on otherwise they would cancel our account altogether. I called today, again, and supposedly the person I talked to was going to get it fixed. He said that we just needed to pay $111.05, which was for 2 months of service (the correct past due amount), and that we should get another bill with the correct amount of $55.53 that will be due by October 26th. Obviously my wife couldn't get online to pay it, so she tried calling to make payment. Again, another customer service woman that she talked to was extremely rude to her telling her that she didn't care who I talked to, that the $315.00 past due amount needed to be made in order to turn the services back on and if it ends up being that there are any credits to our account, those would show up in a couple of months. I'm not sure why our DirecTV was turned off because not only did we pay DirecTV for this already, the TV has nothing to do with the internet or phone bill.

I was able to get online at work and pay the $111.05 that I was told to pay. Now we'll see if they actually turn the services back on. So far it's 3:17pm and nothing has been turned back on. So now they have our money and we have no services. What a SCAM!!!

Sounds like your honesty got the better of you in this scenario. Your statement says "you agreed to the terms," but wanted out 65 days later. The grace period is just 30 days.When you say "we thought it was what we had discussed - but it was not." If you elaborate on that more?

Centurylink waives termination fees if speed is lower than 80% of the "up to" speed. If your service is running 16MBPS-20MBPS, then thats within that range. If it slower than that AND there has been 3 more attempts by a Centurylink tech to resolve the issue with it still running slower than that range; Termination fees can and will be waived for that,

Termination fee waivers are regulated by a public utility commission tariff and there's no one in the company that can waive fees under the reason, "I just don't want it anymore," or "I can't afford it anymore." That would violate a PUC tariff and could result in the company getting up to a $10k fine.

Or, the dishonest way: you could always reconnect if you've already cancelled. The rep would waive the fee once reconnected. As soon as it's reconnected, you could cancel again. Since there's a 30 day grace period. The 2nd cancellation wouldn't be automatically charged. Unless the representative goes through the effort to manually debit the 2nd termination fee. Which, none of them ever do. Voila, cancellation fee gone. You would generally see at $19.95 reconnect fee, but thats better than $200.  If your services are still active, just ask to extend your current contract. That triggers the old contract void without penalty and triggers a new 30 day grace period on the new contract. Cancel a day or so later. No cancellation fee.Unless of course you get a rep that does the extra effort to do manual debits. It's a pain, so none usually do.

The last dishonest way option: Call 1-800-603-6000. Ask to regrade the service to business. Credit input is not enforced for business service, so the rep can input any random number for a business taxID that you give them. This removes your SSN. Google whatever random address for a Centurylink retail store. Have them mail the bill there under whatever fake business name with fake contact information. Not your problem anymore.

PEOPLE!  Contact your own (State's attorney general's office) and file a complaint with them!

This will help prosecute bad company's that scam you within your own state.