Listen to this articleMy elderly 72 year old mother visited the AT&T Mobility retail store in Philadelphia, MS (not an authorized resaler) to pay what was left on a post-paid account that was closed from where the number was switched to pre-paid. The past due, remaining balance that AT&T is demanding is $45, otherwise it will be turned over to collections. She thought when she went to the brick and mortar store, that was the end of it until she showed me the receipt.
When I saw the receipt, I showed her that the money she paid was actually applied to her current pre-paid account instead of the closed account that the company is demanding be paid. I immediately called the AT&T Mobility retail store that the payment was made at and explained the situation. Even though it was their Kiosk with AT&T’s proprietary software that processed the payment they immediately refused to do anything to rectify the situation. They said their “system” wouldn’t let them. So I proceeded to call Customer Service at 611, which gave me another number that I called, who gave me another number to call.
Several calls in, Customer Service told me that she could not do anything because the payment was processed with a “different system”. The Customer Service Representative then instructed me to return to the AT&T Mobility retail store with the receipt. Saying that there was no way that the retail store could not issue an override and issue a refund or apply the payment to the defunct account.
Wrong. I returned to the AT&T Mobility retail store and they continued giving me the same story. I have never seen a store that wouldn’t correct a problem when the problem is their fault. Josh, the Manager, even spoke with Customer Service on my mobile phone and still wouldn’t correct the problem.
By this time, several employees at the store was grouping behind Josh. Saying that the payment was applied to the pre-paid account, that payment arrangements would have to be made on the closed account, we can take the money next month and apply it to the past due account, and so on and so on. It’s inconceivable that the money was still sitting in the kiosk bill tray and they couldn’t issue a refund because of a mistake AT&T made.
We wasn’t asking for something free. Nothing is free. AT&T could have made this right but chose not to because of relying on software to tell them what to do instead of a human being.
We were planning to completely switch to a different company entirely but the only reason my mother and I are still with AT&T is because of their Customer Retention Department. Just to think, a multi-billion dollar company, to which I even own stock in, can’t retract a payment from an account that is already paid up and issue a refund.
If you want better customer service, I would check out Ting or Project Fi by Google. Both are excellent companies that offer extremely better customer service when it comes to billing problems and managing your account.
Project Fi offers competitive rates that are capped so you never be overcharged with hidden fees and overages. One person can get service and pay $10 per GB for data up to 6GB. After that, data is free for the rest of the month.
Ting offers a sliding price model so you only pay for what you use. Setting usage limits to the lines on your account is available right on your dashboard. Saving you money each month.