AT&T failed to cancel DSL account, still wants me to pay, collection agency calling me !

[sea_grapes]

Last year I ordered DSL service for my daughter. There was no contract to sign, no penalty for early termination. In February 2011 she moved and AT&T could not get DSL service to work at her new place. Around the end of February, I called and cancelled the service and she got another provider.

I had been on auto-pay, so I was paid up at that time. In June I noticed they were still billing my Amex card. I called AT&T and they said they had no record of the cancellation but they would return 3 months of the $55 a month they had charged. They also took me off auto-pay.

I thought that was the end of it, but in August I started getting calls from a collection agency saying I owed AT&T $218 for DSL service.

I have called AT&T many times. I've spoken to Accounts Receivable and Customer Service. They say I terminated the service on May 31st - where they got that date I have no idea.

I have talked to reps who just made up something - "it's an early termination fee", reps who cut me off because they didn't know what else to do, reps who promised their supervisor would call me back within an hour to fix it, etc. The last person I talked to seemed to actually understand the issue - but said he couldn't find any department willing to handle it!!! He was the last one to tell me his supervisor would call me as soon as she got out of a meeting. They never call back.

The issue is this: when I called to cancel the service at the end of February, the person I talked to said she would do it, but SHE DIDN'T DO IT. This has caused all these problems and countless calls to AT&T and from their collection agency.

I've been an AT&T cell phone customer since 1998 - I currently pay them a lot of money every month for the 4 lines I have. Why would they want to do this to a good customer? I don't know where to turn because every time I talk to them they promise a resolution and do NOTHING.

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

Try contacting one of the Community Managers via PM.
Alex
http://forums.att.com/t5/notes/privatenotespage/tab/compose/note-to-user-id/318276
or
Jam
http://forums.att.com/t5/notes/privatenotespage/tab/compose/note-to-user-id/2548143

[sea_grapes]

Thanks for the suggestion - no response so far

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

They are ATT employees and I think they might take weekends off (since other employees they need to contact do not work weekends at the office, like Billing).  You should hear something by early next week.

[ATTAlexCM]

Thanks everyone!

@sea_grapes - I received your PM and replied. 

Regards,

Alex

[Dr-D-2]

I am having very the same problem. Was someone able to resolve it for you?  I feel that we have no recourse in this situation but I hope I am wrong.

[ATTAlexCM]

Hey Dr-D-2,

I received your PM and replied.

Regards,

Alex

[danaoh]

ATT has no record of my cancelling my DSL account either! I was on auto-pay for my home phone and didn't know for 9 months. 

I have since filed a BBB complaint. Has anyone been able to get a refund?!?!?!

Thank you.

[Dr-D-2]

My situation was resolved after I posted on the forum.  Have you been contacted by one of the forum administrators?  If not, I would go ahead and post a new message describing the problem and asking a forum administrator to address it. 

I ended up hearing first from a forum administrator and then getting a phone call from an account manager; then I received another phone call about two days later and reiterated the situation. At that point, they (I believe it was an account manager) confirmed that they were going to reimburse my account and cancel my service, as I had originally requested. They gave me a confirmation number so that I could reference the transaction in the future. If you have a confirmation number from the first time you tried to cancel, I would recommend referencing this.  Within about 2 weeks I received a reimbursement check and a letter confirming that my service had ended. 

If you've hit a dead end, I suggest starting with a fresh posting on the forum since I never got anywhere with phone calls to customer service (which I'm sure you've tried).

Good luck to you!

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

Try contacting Julie, one of the AT&T Community Specialists for further assistance.

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danaoh wrote:

ATT has no record of my cancelling my DSL account either! I was on auto-pay for my home phone and didn't know for 9 months. 

I have since filed a BBB complaint. Has anyone been able to get a refund?!?!?!

Thank you.

---

[Squawkbert]

Same thing happened to my daughter. She (tried) to cancel dsl at previous college address, picked up uverse service at new college address - they failed to cancel, bills to old address, collections... Even though she had been receiving and paying Uverse bills at the new address. How stupid is that? I'm now in the process of trying to make sure none of this trashes anyone's credit rating.

It would be nice if AT&T would 1) recognize that there is a problem given the ease with which so many similar stories are found here and 2) FIX IT.

It would also be nice if, when calling for customer service, we could talk to people who can actually change things instead of just retaking a description of the problem and then making promises that will not be kept.

Someone eventually did fix the problem and someone else did finally agree to expedite final closure and reporting of the zero balance to the collections agency before they sent the ratings agencies a charge-off, but it took a lot of phone time.

Helpful customer strategy note - Do not accept less than what you want, keep asking to be transferred to someone who can do what you want, do not settle, do not hang up, tell them that you are willing to stay on for as long as it takes. Do not accept "I'll have them call you back". It seems that they are not allowed to hang up on you, so they can't break contact without permission from you. Use this to your advantage.

[pagecynthia]

This just happened to me as well. I had an account for 2 months a temporary location before moving to my new home.  I tried to transfer my account but they had trouble doing that so told me that they would just cancel my old one and make me a new one.  After that I never received any bills for the old one and started paying for my new account.  Not once did see anything hinting that my old account may be open.  I get a collection letter yesterday (2 years after I've closed the old account) saying that I haven't paid and now owe almost $300 to AT&T. I spent over 3 hours on the phone yesterday trying to just get a human to talk to but every time I get a person, I would explain the situation and next thing I'm back on hold again be and waiting for the next person to answer.  I got bounced back and forth between the same departments over 7 times with an average waiting time of 15 minutes of being on hold.  

My issue is still not resolved.  I PM one of the recommendations above and hope to hear something back soon.