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Report: #1184649

Complaint Review: AT&T - Nationwide

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  • Reported By: Laura — Oakland California
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  • AT&T Nationwide USA

AT&T AT&T CellularAT&T U-VerseAT&T Mobility Consumer Fraud, Breach of Contract, Double Billing....Scam Nationwide Nationwide

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We are in the process of suing AT&T (AT&T Cellular, AT&T U-Verse (wireless internet and cable), and AT&T Mobility (telephone landline). Our full report is over 30 pages worth of documenting their illegal billing practices, as well as our dealings with the company in our attempts to resolve disputes. This does not include the scores of pages of bank statements, paper billing statements as well as billing statements and other materials from their website, and printed directed mail advertisements, showing proof of our claims. When our legal proceedings are complete these will be forwarded to law firms specializing in class action lawsuits against telecommunications and internet/cable companies, as well as the appropriate government agencies.

The following is taken amd adapted from our thank you letter to T.Mobile, after being forced to change cellular carriers. It BRIEFLY summaries A FEW of the issues we had with AT&T as well as reflects a difference in our experience with these two companies.

I am of the opinion that AT&T's leadership takes the "all that matters is the money" view of business. Given the aggressive and consumptive television and direct mail as well as door to door sales campaign, and the fact that their stores only deal with sales (not resolving customer disputes or billing issues), they probably spend over half their profits on advertising to create hype, gut their company (do not invest in upgrading and maintaining their infrastructure or training their employees), and use "year contracts" to entrap their customers into believing that they are imprisoned in a contract they cannot get out of without incurring "breach of contract" fees of $180.00. If all of their customers sued them in small claims courts and collected, among other remedies, for the TIME they spent trying to resolve account disputes as well as damages, the company would be insolvent (bankrupt).  The damages are far more than the year's worth of service charges for internet, cellular, etc.

As of this date our records show that we paid all of bills on all of our accounts and the balances on all three accounts should be $0.  They are claiming we owe $689+  We started our cellular and uverse service in February 2014.

October 23, 2014

T-Mobile Customer Relations

Re: Account XXXXXXXXX
Thank You

Dear Sirs/Madams:

Just wish to send a note of thanks to your company's leadership as well as your sales, customer service and technician team members.

We are "refugees" from AT&T. The short of it is that we had a landline for over a decade with AT&T. This year, we decided to "upgrade" and took the bait and switched our internet service and cellular accounts over to AT&T. We purchased our first tablets (iPads) and upgraded our phone to an iPhone and upgraded our internet service from DSL to wireless. We also purchased our first flat screen TV.

Prior to this, we had long standing accounts with other carriers without incident.

Being a business professional that has lead dynamic organizations and teams, I appreciate that your company has invested in its infrastructure (cellular coverage area) and your team members (training so they are knowledgeable and courteous and honest). I also appreciate that you are responsive to the market and have innovative responses, rather than going along with the "all that matters is the money, so lets rip off our customers and gut our company." Specifically: your offer to provide a credit for trading in your phone and paying for "breach of contract" fees from other carriers; providing written contracts that are clear about the terms and conditions; providing an opportunity to make payments on a new cellular phone, rather than offering discounts contingent on contracts; providing exceptional customer service, etc.

From our first contact with T. Mobile customer service when we tried to activate our existing iPhone, to the sale representative (173622 Berkeley, CA Store), to today's interaction with customer service representative Jovan and technician Brian, we feel very pleased and grateful for the exceptional service. Your team members were considerate and honest and responsive. They did not play games, try to commit consumer fraud, and seemed to genuinely care about our needs and want our business as customers. In this day and age of business, if you are looking for long term relationships, customer service can make or break that relationship. While at the moment we are in career transitions, when we are ready to add more phones to our personal account, or add a business account, we will be sure to use T. Mobile. Additionally, we are already recommending your service to others looking for cellular phone service, or seeking to be liberated from companies like AT&T.

In contrast to our experience with T.Mobile, From the get go we had problems with AT&T that never ended up getting resolved, even after putting in over 90 hours in telephone calls and letter writing, three trips to local stores, and going through their formal dispute processes. We spent more time on the phone to AT&T trying to resolve account disputes that we did on the phone for personal or business matters. After looking online and reviewing consumer complaints we discovered that these were systemic problems with various cellular and/or cable/internet service companies. Briefly, Issues included, but are not limited to:

Never completing wireless internet installation (the box on our old Victorian home was over 20 years old and the apple technician that performed the installation stated he put in a request to upgrade the box).

Double charging and "cramming" our cellular phone bill into our landline account.

Allocating bank electronic payments sent to three different accounts into the cellular account and shutting off our internet without notice, then refusing to check the accounts and reallocate the payments to the proper account (demanding double payment, reactivation and late fees).

Money games - claiming payments were late, even though our bank statements and their own billing statements reflected that the payments were on time, then charging us late fees and interest; adding undisclosed fees and unexplained and unjustified charges at random within billing cycles and claiming they were late (charges ranged from .24 cents service fees to unexplained fees as high as $109).

Consumer fraud - telling us that we could link and sync our iPhone with our iPads via the home wireless internet service. The iPhone sat on the charger not being used and was duplicating everything on the iPads running up $40 worth of cellular data charges. They would not answer our questions, so I found out through other means how to unlink the devices and take other measures to prevent further charges.

Refusing to answer questions regarding technical issues, such as what to do to stop the cellular data charges from using the iPad on the home wireless internet network. Refusing to explain ridiculous and unexplained charges to all of our accounts.

Sending the accounts to collection and adversely affecting our credit scores, etc. We had two different collect agencies trying to collect on the same alleged debt,at the same time. 

Transferring us every 10 minutes to another "customer service representative" without addressing issues (the last time I was on the phone for over an hour and transferred 8 times); hanging up on us; claiming to need to do more research on our account and never calling us back; having their in-store sales representative confess to us that they knowingly commit consumer fraud because the customer is not given a written contract so they cannot dispute issues .... and that is ok because "all the cell phone carriers do it." etc.

Creating new contracts and terms without our consent, including extending the contract end date.

Finally agreeing to our resolution offer, then closing our accounts without notice, breaching our contracts (we got written contracts by ordering services online and printing the contract and contract terms).

Refusing to unlock our iPhone (that had been paid in full, when our account balance was $0 and the account had been closed by them without our consent) because their policy is simply that they will not unlock any phone. They first claimed that the phone was not connected to the account.

The in-store sales representative had the same frustrations dealing with their customer service as we had - at one point he hung up on them and stuck his tongue out at the phone!

The experience was so negative, XXXXXX didn't want to keep or use her new Apple iPhone any longer. We ended up purchasing a new Alcatel Fierce phone from T. Mobile.

At any rate, this is the first time I am having to take a utility company to court to resolve the account disputes and correct and repair our resulting credit score damage.... and I am 51 years old... I have been dealing with utility companies over a long period of time and in three states with both professional/business accounts as well as personal accounts.

I say all that to emphasize what a relief it is as well as pleasure it is, to do business with T. Mobile. Thanks for breaking with "the pack" and providing honest service and innovative solutions for cellular phone customers. I hope your company continues to grow and flourish.

Warm regards,XXXXXXXXX

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 10/23/2014 10:59 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/att/nationwide/att-att-cellularatt-u-verseatt-mobility-consumer-fraud-breach-of-contract-double-bi-1184649. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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