posted
Ok. We get the AT&T bill yesterday in the mail. Checking it over as per usual we see a charge for 41 minutes to Irvine CA.
This call occured on Sept 25th at 1:38 PM. Total charge: $14.35.
Heres the puzzling part. My Girlfriend was at work at that time and I didn't make the call either. Yet AT&T insist we did. To quote Gilbert Graham, the supervisor my girlfriend talked to last night, AT&T dosen't make mistakes. The number is 949-271-5470 Reverse look-up comes up with nothing. We tried several. Same for Google. The first CS rep we talked to said they couldn't even trace the number. Then Supervisor Gilbert did let slip it was a business. Other than that he said he couldn't say.
So after over an hour of haggling with Gilbert, Brian and AT&T's voice thingy, they are saying there is nothing they can do. Hell, Gilbert even asked my girlfriend if she heard voices too.
Can anyone find out info on this number?
Posts: 986 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I just called them on my cell phone. Unfortunately, the company name seems to have been left of the answering system. It comes up "... Product Support". It sounds like it is some type of computer supply business.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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AT&T SUCKS!!!! They call me three times a day to talk about long distance. Your experience has justified all the times I have yelled, cussed, hung up, handed the phone to my 3 year old daughter and told them to shove it.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
My personal vendetta is against SBC. They have charged me a total of $90 for a DSL we don't have!As soone as the dispute is resolved I'm cancelling them and going to only our cell phones.
posted
Oh yes and I've called them about 5 times and spoken to supervisors twice. They keep saying they will get back to me in 3-5 days but they never do. This last time I went high enough up the food chain it might have gotten resolved, but I'm not holding my breath.
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I know (after many hours on the phone)for SBC if you don't want to pay something you can call the billing department have them list it in "contested charges" and you don't have to pay it for a couple months while they research the issue.
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AT&T will do that, my dad and I have had really good luck with our AT&T, and they've actually been rather prompt when we had problems. But when you have telemarketers for phone companies call you, just tell them that you DO use AT&T, or you work for AT&T or some other company and you get your phone service for free, they never call back. Satyagraha
Posts: 1986 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Maybe your girlfriend was trying to by you a CHRISTMAS present (since it is Network Everywhere) -- did you think about that? Maybe trying to keep it under wraps??
(not the time of the year to be asking about suspicious activity.......)
First, don't say you ARE cancelling your SBC phone service, merely act like you will UNLESS they give you your money back.
Don't be reasonable. If you're reasonable, they deal with you through normal channels. Be unreasonable. You may get hung up on a couple times, but you'll be transferred by someone who does their job to the *ahem* problematic customers part of billing, which is empowered to do much more if they think it involves keeping at least some of your business.
Make sure you're talking to the DSL people. 1 877 SBC DSL5 , 1 877 722 3755 . If the IVR is still the same, I suggest options 2 then 4 then 1 (that's the, to change your sbc dsl order section if the options aren't the same). 3 then 2 then 1 should get you the same place. That is NOT the billing or cancellations subdepartment, that's the new order department. Tell them you're very upset about not getting your refund and you want to talk to "that EPC place" you got transferred to last time. The new orders people are, umm, malleable. They'll almost certainly transfer you through. EPC is sort of the top of the hierarchy in SBC's DSL company (ASI). There is no publicized direct line to them (business customers get one, but they pay more , and thats really business EPC, this will get you to residential EPC). EPC can do pretty much anything with your dsl order. Remember, be unreasonable. If you get EPC, don't let them transfer you. While EPC has some discretion in the matter, SBC policy is if someone refuses a transfer you can't be transferred. Make them promise to take care of your problem, then get their employee id, then let them transfer you as necessary. If that doesn't work, get to EPC again and demand to speak with a supervisor, referencing the previous person not getting things done.
Let me know when you've copied/pasted this somewhere, and I'll delete the message.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Fugu, the DSL people were the most uhelpful of all. I only began to get results when I started talking to the regular SBC people.
This is still going on. I'm going to use my human connections tomorrow however. My neigbor has a friend who is high enough up in the SBC food chain that she can straighten it out for me. She was on vacation until today though, and I was planning on calling her tomorrow after she had caught up on stuff.
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The DSL people are trained to be unreasonable. They're far more scripted than most of SBC. Well, most of them. EPC isn't, but I doubt you've gotten to talk with them yet. The system is set up so most people don't talk to them. However, that same scripting results in being manipulable .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
We once got a bill form SBC for three hundred some dollars for a LD phone call, we called and demanded that this was not true, they insisted it was, this went on for a very long time, until I went to the local hub, with the bill, demanded the manager, and showed him the bill, he said, "I don't see the problem sir." To which I pointed out that our phone service provider was Bell, notice the pretty logo? After realizing that we weren't even thier clients, they let us go, and found out who actually made the call. Grrrrrr!
Posts: 1900 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
This reminds me of an episode on NPR's This AMerican Life about a 9 month battle over a $950 phone bill via World Com.
It was only settled when the Radio Station called asking to put their conversation on the air.
The reporter documented several lies made to her in the attempts to solve the problem. Only when the companies head man showed up to solve the problem was it taken care of.
Aren't big companies fun?
Oh, they put this segment in a peice called, "The Middle of Nowhere." along with stories about the inland in the middle of the Pacific, and refugees stuck there in prisons.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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This is why I want a show like the one in Norman Spinrad's novel "Bug Jack Barron." It consisted of one man on a stool who would take calls from callers with problems, and then he'd call (live, on the air) presidents of the offending companies to straighten things out. Such was his ratings that company heads were afraid not to answer, because they'd be lambasted in front of millions of people and lose sales.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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, and thats really business EPC, this will get you to residential EPC). EPC can do pretty much anything with your dsl order. Remember, be unreasonable. If you get EPC, don't let them transfer you. While EPC has some discretion in the matter, SBC policy is if someone refuses a transfer you can't be transferred. Make them promise to take care of your problem, then get their employee id, then let them transfer you as necessary. If that doesn't work, get to EPC again and demand to speak with a supervisor, referencing the previous person not getting things done.![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
