CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the morning of Wednesday, September 30, I arrived at the office and found a general voice mail message that had come in at sometime during the overnight. The message was from “Vivian at AT&T Repair” and it advised me “the issue that you are unable to verify your carrier has been resolved. Please dial 1-203-700-4141 to confirm. We will leave this ticket open for now, but someone from repair will give you a call in the morning to verify that everything is taken care of”.
Given that I had decided to eschew making voluntary contact with AT&T Repair, I had to assume that this unexpected message was the result of Scott Buddenhagen’s work.
You may recall that there were two issues still present at the close of business the day before. Issue one, when dialing the number for verifying the in-state long distance carrier (203-700-4141) I was getting a message saying that the call could not be completed as dialed. This morning I dialed that number from each line. To my mild surprise, it actually worked on all seven lines.
Issue two, line 6 had been telling me the day before that the long distance carrier on that line was NOS Communications. There is one difference this morning. I am now able to confirm that NOS comes up on both in-state and out-of-state long distance.
Vivian’s message told me that someone from AT&T Repair would be calling this morning. I decided to bring the matter up with them when they called.
Assuming, of course, that they actually did call.
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They did not. Call, that is.
I periodically dialed the verification numbers again, just to see if anything changed, but I continued to get recordings that thanked me for choosing NOS Communications.
Part of me was aching to just let it go; to ignore it all; to take the position that I had nothing to do with creating this mess in the first place, so why should I take it upon myself to assume responsibility for getting it fixed? But, at the same time, another part of me was hearing warning signals, was casting a wary eye on angry storm clouds roiling on the horizon, portending disaster, calling out to me in a sinister voice that said, get this resolved now, before it morphs into something even bigger down the road.
Because let’s face it, this company, it appears, this thing called AT&T, is riddled with people who have no accountability, no incentive to perform, and no standard or measure of performance, even if there was an incentive. They tell their customers whatever may be expedient at the moment, whatever they feel like telling them, without devotion to or interest in whether their words are accurate, or even truthful. They do not follow-up, not as a matter of course, not even when they swear they will. They tell you one thing and do something else. Their promises are as substantive as empty air.
They have no credibility.
They. Just. Don’t. Care!
Which means that to leave this unattended to today is to risk it remaining unattended to next month, next year, and for many years and generations to come, possibly ad infinitum.
So, I called Scott Buddenhagen, and after a bit of phone tag, we spoke late that afternoon. I told him about the communication from his repair department, about the half of the job they completed, and about the follow-up they failed to complete. I characterized it all as par for the course. I got the sense it was nothing he hadn’t heard before.
He proceeded to tell me that the reason the in-state verification line had failed to work yesterday was due to a programming issue on a regional level. It turns out that no one within a ten mile radius of my office had been able to use that number for……they weren’t sure for how long. That’s now been fixed. I asked if I was going to get a reward for having helped them discover that their system was broken. He laughed. I guess he thought I was joking.
As to the reason for NOS Communications to keep popping up on the verification line, he told me there is no discernable reason why that should be happening. Still, he admitted, there has to be a reason, so in recognition of that reality, he’s going to open another repair ticket and get someone to look into it.
“Let me guess,” I finished the topic for him. “Someone will get back to me. Right?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “Yes, they will.”
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I spoke to Amy again on October 2nd. She had called just to touch base, just to see if we needed anything. To my inquiry, she informed me that she had been able to verify that all of our call activity was being properly routed to PNG. We briefly discussed the continuing message claiming the continuing presence of NOS as the carrier on line 6, but she assured me that was not actually the case. I finally decided to just let it go, though I confess that I still have an occasional nightmare wherein an eighteen wheeler pulls up outside my office door for delivery of a six thousand volume NOS phone bill.
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As of mid-November, roughly six weeks later, the verification number still says I am being served by NOS Communications.
There has been no further contact with anyone at AT&T.
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As a side note, I offer a word or two of unsolicited advice to the executive wing at PNG. I don’t know how much Amy Mounce is getting paid by you folks, but it’s probably not enough. Do your company a favor; take care of her. If you don’t, she is the kind of employee that people like me make every effort to steal away from people like you.
And to the executive wing at AT&T? Your entire service organization needs an enema.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
With service restored, at least for that moment, a few days later I returned once more to the matter of AT&T invoices.
You may recall that in one of my conversations with Wanda “I’ll Get Back to You” Devereaux, she claimed that she had spoken to AT&T’s billing people, and they had allegedly decreed that all amounts billed, to that point, were accurate.
This, of course, was the gospel according to Wanda, the same Wanda whose circuitous discussion of PIC Codes had been more reminiscent of an Abbott and Costello routine than an advisory service. Given that performance, I thus had some reservations about blindly accepting her second hand telling of an unverified decree allegedly made by a nameless and faceless entity.
Looking back over my own notes, I had informed Wanda that there were billing issues on September 10th and 11th. I had informed her again on the 28th of September. Scott Buddenhagen was given the same information at the end of September. The amount paid on the invoice I had received for period ending August 15th, the one with the $1,485.00 Contract Commitment Charge, had been reduced by the amount of that charge back in mid-September.
Put it all together and there can be no question that AT&T had been informed there was a problem. And yet, nothing had happened.
No calls had been placed. No inquiries had been made. No fact-finding had occurred. Instead the collective corporate reaction had been stick its head in sand; to see hear and speak no evil; to leave it alone in the apparent hope that it would go away. Three blind mice. See how they run.
Or, as the t-shirt said, DILLIGAF?
And so it came to pass that in late September, another AT&T invoice arrived, this one for the period ended September 15th . This one contained a newly billed total of almost three thousand bucks, the vast majority of which resulted from over billed long distance charges on service that was hijacked in the first place.
So, for the second consecutive month, an inflated invoice was reduced to a more reasonable level before being paid. This time a letter as enclosed with the check. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but excerpts included:
To Whom it May Concern;
Your company was fired as my long distance carrier on July 6, 2009. The reasons were many and varied, but can best be summed up as failure to perform the tasks for which you were engaged, under the conditions by which you were engaged to perform them. Between July 6 and October 2, 2009, I was engaged in an ongoing effort to actually get rid of you by getting my service switched to the long distance carrier of my choosing. During those three months, your company repeatedly failed to follow instructions, which has resulted in a variety of billing issues, all of which attempt to provide your company with unearned, windfall revenues. With that provided as a general background, let me explain what has transpired in the recent past, and what is further transpiring herein.
Subsequent to your dismissal on July 6, I received an invoice from you, dated August 15, 2009, in the amount of $2,112.17. A significant portion of that invoice - $1,485.00 – was a single entry identified as “Contract Commitment Charge”. There are two noteworthy observations I submit in response to that charge. One, the $1,485.00 charge is, in my view, an attempt by your company to be rewarded for having failed miserably to adequately perform and provide services to my company. It’s rather like a corrupt politician being voted out of office, and rationalizing that he’s owed a few extra years salary before leaving. Two, a review of the August 15 invoice will clearly show that AT&T was still providing my long distance service anyway, from which we can only conclude that even if your attempt at extortion was acceptable, by your own twisted logic, the facts fail to support the notion that you had even earned it. My God, you must have former Enron accountants working for you.
As a result, I made a payment against the August 15 invoice in the amount of $452.47. That was the amount of the previous month’s (7/09) invoice, and by my calculations, should have been the amount of the August invoice as well.
This time around your efforts toward unjust enrichment have centered on raising my per minute call rate from block of time rates that ranged from less than $.05 cents per minute, billed in 10 second increments, to a whopping $.67 per minute, billed in full minute increments. And once again, despite your services having been cancelled, AT&T was still holding my long-distance service hostage. As I read it, that corrupt politician wasn’t happy with merely stealing a couple of extra years salary – he gave himself a hell of raise in the process!
Quite frankly, I don’t know what to call this. Punitive pricing? Extortion? Fraud?
Whatever, it’s not going to work.
Since receiving your August invoice, I have spent many hours on the phone with AT&T representatives trying to get my long distance service provider properly designated, and my billing properly straightened out. You are currently approved for providing my local phone service at the rate of $327.88 per month. Even though you should have been separated from any further long distance activities or charges back in July, I will go ahead and recognize the monthly block of time charges I had previously agreed to, but only for one more month. That monthly charge is $90.00. Adding in taxes and fees, I go back once again to the amount of my July 15, 2009 bill - $452.47. That amount was paid against my August 15 invoice, and is hereby paid against my September 15 invoice as well. After application of those two amounts, I expect and will accept no less than issuance of a credit for the rest of your $5,029.26 charges. All of them. No exceptions.
Your abiding by this expectation will help us all to avoid costly, lengthy and embarrassing legal remedies. It is my hope that your company makes the right decision.
Yours truly,
That letter was mailed, along with a check, on October 8.
A copy of that letter was sent to Kevin, my “go-to” guy at Total Communications, Inc., aka TCI, of East Hartford, CT. Kevin, of course, hasn’t graced these pages in a while, primarily because he and his company were fired back on July 6.
In the months that have passed since that eventful day, one thing I have found interesting is that while AT&T clearly embraces the belief that they can only be replaced if the decision to do so is theirs, Kevin and company have accepted reality like adults. They have done what was asked of them. They just went away.
Nevertheless, because this ridiculous tale refuses to end, it becomes increasingly difficult to project an ending that does not include lawyers. And of course, once they get involved, pillagers and destroyers that they are, the real trouble will begin. Money will begin to flow like rivers, paper will begin to fall like a ticker tape parade, and Kevin and his boys will be sitting there right alongside the rest of us, hoping that Armageddon will arrive soon, starting with the local bar association.
So even if Kevin may be in little danger of being labeled an over-achiever in the field of customer service, I can also understand that his attempting to liaise with AT&T must have been a lot like trying to eat soup with a fork. On that basis, it seemed only fair to warn him that this was not, by any stretch of the imagination, over.
CHAPTER TWENTY
On October 23rd, a new AT&T invoice arrived, this one for the period ending October 15th. It was instantly evident that the logic expressed in the letter I’d sent with my last payment had fallen on deaf ears.
While my payments from the past two months had been received and processed, all other charges and balances had been carried forward. Some late fees had been added. I found $124.00 in long distance carrier switching fees had been added to the pile. And there was more of the same nonsense on long distance charges; inflated costs per minute for US, even more for international, blah, blah, blah. Altogether, just over $2,000.00 in new charges had been added. The total invoice amount was now up to $6,166.39.
But something was…….not quite right. Something beyond the obvious, I mean.
On my third spin through the bill I finally realized what was wrong; the itemized call activity did not represent a full month. In fact, it only represented a week, with all of the calls I was currently being billed for having been made between September 15th and 22nd.
Now to repeat a point of comparison made a month earlier, if I had kept AT&T as my long distance provider, a reasonable total for the invoice would have been around $450.00. If they had processed my change orders as instructed, providing no long distance service, it would have been a little over $300.00. In both cases, those are costs for a month.
Yet here I was, looking at over $2000 in new charges, and the bill on which those charges appeared represented just a week’s worth of activity. One week. Seven days, only five of which were business days.
I began to think that Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James and Bernie Madoff were alive and well and running a phone company.
So, that bill arrived on Friday the 23rd of October. I was still debating what it meant and what to try to do about it when another eye opening bill arrived the following Monday, the 26th. The new one was from…..
MCI.
Wanda had struck again.
Sitting in my hands was a bill from MCI which detailed 295 itemized calls, all made between the 23rd and 28th of September. Each call was billed at $.85 per minute, with full minute billing increments. The total amount of the bill was $400.59.
Now, follow the timeline here.
September 28th was the day our phones died, early in the morning, with the reason for that death, according to Wanda, having been our use of the wrong PIC Code. Remember the whole Abbott and Costello meets Daffy Duck routine during which she attempted to point the fault in our direction? Then later, she claimed responsibility for restoring our service by switching us over to the PIC Code for MCI. That switch, and she was adamant on this point, was made on the afternoon of the 28th.
The MCI bill showed that 294 calls had been made between the 23rd and 25th of September. The 26th and 27th were the weekend, so no calls or charges appeared for those two days. The bill then showed a single call having been made on Monday the 28th, at 9:30 am. The phones went down after that time.
So Wanda, and/or any of you other yahoos at AT&T, who among you has the courage to even try to explain this to me? By your version of events, I was an MCI Customer (however unwitting or unwilling) for about twenty hours. So how is it I’m getting bills from them that precede by five days the date you claimed you switched me over to them? How is it that calls made, apparently using the MCI PIC Code, seemed to work just fine for a few days, and then suddenly choked on the morning of the 28th because “we” were using the wrong PIC Code? How is it that the phones suddenly began to work again after you switched us to the PIC Code you had obviously already switched us to the week before?
What really happened on the morning of the 28th to kill our phone service?
What kind of nonsense are you people peddling?
I’ve spent the past few decades interacting on a daily basis with folks who live in the worlds of business, sales and even politics. As a result of those dealings, I’ve been lied to so many times in my life that I often wonder if I even still have the capacity to recognize the truth when I hear it.
But nothing I’ve ever been exposed to before prepared me for what has been shoveled in my direction by AT&T. You people have raised the bar to a whole new level. You have elevated BS to a life form that has never been seen in the past, and will probably never be matched again in the future.
Un-be-lieveable!
So there I sat, bills to the left of me, bills to the right, the peculiar aroma of fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, misinformation and more outright lies than I can even count, wafting around me. I had gotten real tired of dealing with this crap.
I finally packed up the MCI bill in its entirety and returned it to them with a short note pointing out that I am not currently a customer of theirs, I have never willingly been a customer of theirs, and based on the prices they seem to charge ($.85 a minute?) there seems little likelihood I will ever be a customer of theirs. I wished them well and suggested that they direct any questions they may have to AT&T.
As to AT&T, for the third month in a row, I reduced the amount of their invoice and sent them a letter. Well, two letters actually. I ran a copy of the letter from the month before, then drafted and sent the following with it.
To whom it may concern:
Following this note is a copy of a letter that was sent to you people thirty days ago. The acts and the pattern of behavior described in that letter have not changed in the past month, so rather than keep regurgitating the same story from one billing period to the next, I’ve decided to just send another copy of the same communication. You completely ignored the first one. You’ve completely ignored other letters I’ve sent. I’m confident you will completely ignore this one as well.
Enclosed is check for the same amount I remitted last month, and the month before that. The reasons for the adjusted payment amount have not changed. The method of calculation is identical. Both are explained in the enclosed letter copy, which you will, or course, ignore.
Yours truly,
So is that the end of the tale? Frankly, I doubt it. That’s where it sat as of November 17, 2009, but the calendar tells me that I will soon be receiving new telephone invoices, so there’s no telling what kind of new annoyances, mysteries and/or assorted nonsense is still to come.
As this is written, the scheming bastards have billed me for over $5,700.00 in bogus charges, fees and punitively inflated costs that they have not earned nor are they entitled to. Based on their behavior to date, I find it nearly inconceivable that they won’t continue trying to pile it on. While time will tell on that one, this much is certain; I will probably spend the rest of my life associating the name AT&T with staggering degrees of incompetence, a near zero devotion to truth, and the integrity of a gang of crack addicts.
Beyond that, who knows? For now, I just sit and wait.
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