AT&T get it right....geez

I get this nifty little postcard from AT&T notifying me that I now have three options of my bill.

  1. Sign up for online billing.

  2. Direct Billing from them.

  3. Local Phone Co. billing but there’s a $1.50 charge.

I am thinking, okay I need direct billing because I need physical proof of my bill for tax reasons. But then I think, wait, I also need to be able to access my account on line because that’s how I pay virtually all of my bills, on line.

Well, I signed up for the Direct Billing but think, wait, can I still sign up for paying my bills on line too?

So I call them up, and after pressing this # and that # I find out that I can only sign up for one or the other. In short I can’t pay my damn bill on line if I also need a hard copy of the bill.

She gave me all these lame ass options but I think that any company that is as “progressive” as AT&T needs to get their heads out of their asses and make it easy for me to pay my bill. Don’t make it hard, make it easyyyyyyyy.

One of the options is that I call them with my credit card, check info, whatever…well you know what, it’s a lot cheaper to set it up so I can have that physical copy and also have the option of paying my bill on line…rather than me wasting time talking to someone on the other end of the phone that is making minimum wage taking my time and your resources of paying someone to enter the same frickin thing I would do on line…

Get your heads out of your asses, you want me to pay my bill? Make it easy, easy, easy…I am your customer, there are other long distance providers who would love to charge me up the ass for the same service.

Are you sure you don’t get a statement from them every month, even if you do pay online?

I’ve got some bills that are paid automatically from my checking account, but I still get detailed statements each month itemizing the charges.

Arjuna34

You do get statements with online billing, they’ll email you the url to check it once a month.

But.

I have friends in the UK, so I subscribed to their One Rate Online International Plan, which gave me extremely low calling rates. Through a fuck-up on their end, they cancelled my calling plans and charged me for the basic rate for three months. The lying sons of bitches, scumbags that they are, told me each time I called that it’d be taken care of. But of course not, and they keep deducting my checking account for the money, then I have to get on the phone and bitch till I get a refund. I revoked the authorization to do an automatic debit, and the fucking thieves debited my account anyway.

So now I have switched to WorldCom and am in the process of filing a formal complaint with the Florida Public Service Commission against both AT&T Long Distance and BellSouth, both of whom suck the hind tit right off a sow.

Unless they give you the option to make a payment, as opposed to hosing you for it automatically, don’t do the online billing.

Amulet,

The thing is, I don’t own a printer, I am virtually paperless…I have not had a printer since I moved here almost 3 years ago. It’s still in it’s box, I forgot to take the toner cartridge out and it was on it’s last legs anyway.

My phone co. provider offers us both, the bill in hard copy and on line bill paying – no extra charge.

This is the way of the world. Make it as easy as possible for the customer, they will continue to pay through the nose for excellent service.

You DO know what spawned this problem, Tech’ems… the fact that people (stupid people, of course, of which there are more of) see anything that has the word “Internet” in the title as a Garden-Of-Eden type of product, and it can do no wrong.

I can imaginet he exchange…

YOU: “I’d like a hard copy of my bill, for tax reasons.”
THEM: “But you don’t need a hard copy, you pay online.”
YOU: “But I’d like to keep a copy.”
THEM: “Then you want our Direct Billing program.”
YOU: “No, I want online billing.”
THEM: “But you just said that you wanted a hard copy.”
YOU: “Yes, but I want to actually PAY the bill online.”
THEM: “Then you want our Online Billing.”
YOU: “But I also want a hard copy of my bill, for tax reasons.”
THEM: “But you don’t need a hard copy, you pay online…”

Repeat ad nauseum

The company I worked for started doing this with our PAYCHECKS. Can you believe it?!? About a year ago, they sent out all this propaganda about how we can now see our paychecks on the web. If we want a hard copy, we can print them out! When I inquired as to when I was going to get a private printer in my own office so that I didn’t have to print out my paycheck on the public printer, I got a blank stare. “But why do you need to print them out? You can see them online!” How 'bout “Because I’m not such a dumb fuck that I’m simply going to trust that you all will remember to take out the right taxes, vacation, etc. etc. I want a hard copy in my files for my records.”

Enough people complained that now, if we never ever ever go online to see our paycheck, they’ll keep mailing them to us. Apparantly, in this company that employs something like 3000 engineers, nobody could figure out how to both put the paychecks online AND continue to send hard copies.