Most people have fought one or a few, but I hear about a lot more fights than wins.
I’m ticked over “seasonalized” gas bills that I get stuck with. I started with this company after the heating season ended, and don’t have A/C, but my bills are sky high.
Every time I get a phone bill I amon the phone to the company complaining. All I want is the Basic service with caller ID and call waiting. WHY is it 60 bucks?!? THen if I change my long distance carrier they charge me for a month and a half of long distance service. I have never gotten a reduction of my bill. The only one I have ever won with is my cell phone company. And somehow they come up with payments that I have never paid. Sounds good to me…
Well, I have a positive story to relate. I signed up for the AT&T One-Rate-Global plan, and used it to make a whole bunch of very long calls from 2 countries in Europe just a couple days after signup. You know, like transferring 20 Meg of files from my ISP in Kansas to Portugal over a 14.4k connection? Anyways, a month after I get back, I receive an ENORMOUS bill - in excess of $500 for one month. By my reckoning, according to the plan I should have been charged around $50.
Well, after calling billing assistance at AT&T, they very politely pointed out that I had, in fact, misread the clearly printed rules of the agreement, and there was simply no argument about it - I was careless. Being a firm advocate of personal responsibility, I thanked the nice lady, and was going to hang up, when she said “Well M’am, since this is the first time you used our sevice, I’m going to give you a credit for all the calls you made from Eurpose this month. Your current balance is $28.00” (actually, I can’t remember the exact amount, but it was $28 and change).
I actually protested that that wasn’t necessary, but she said “don’t worry about it - just remember next time that you have to call these certain numbers, not just any number. Thank you for using AT&T.”
Well, by damned, I’ve received a lot of offers from other companies, some as much as $100 to switch. But AT&T gained a lifelong customer with their action. So yes, sometimes good things can happen when dealing with a utility.
I don’t know if this qualifies as a battle with a utility, but it’s a great true story.
I believe it was about 8 years ago; my late wife was on one of her alcohol binges when she filled a money order out in pencil, and sent it off to the electric company. (She later told me she couldn’t find an ink pen). A month later we received a shutoff notice from the electric company, and with money order receipt in hand called the billing dept. to see why our account was not credited with the payment. Little did we know at the time the scope of events about to unfold. Starting with the serial number from our money order receipt, the utility company worked backwards from the cashed out money order. First problem was the money order had been altered. (Who’d guess with it being in pencil)? The signature on the altered money order was none other than Elaine Bobbit, (yes THE Elaine Bobbit). Seems she worked in the mail receiving room at the utility company, and the money order was made out to her lawyer, and endorsed by his office. It also came out that quite a few utility customers were not having their payments applied to their accounts. I understand there was quite an uproar at the utility company over the whole affair. We got lucky and did not have to go to Chicago, (the district office our bills are sent too), to testify in court, and our electric service was credited in the amount of the money order. Of course given a choice between having my electricity cut off and what else Elaine Bobbit is responsible for cutting off, I think I’d settle for the electricity.
[hijack]Sevy, that was Lorena Bobbitt.[/hijack]
I work for a local utility, in billing. Right now, if you try & argue about your bill, you’ll probably win.
We got a new computer system last summer. Talk about your yak-felching, monkey-effing, screwed-up-beyond-hope systems. Good Goddess, this thing blows goats. When we got it, we were told that this system had been tested, and was being used successfully, in several other cities. Found out later that the testing had been minimal, and we were the guinea pigs. NO ONE else has the system we’ve got. City Council approved the purchase of this system because a)it was going to cost less than a million dollars, and b) the company that installed it was the only company that could ensure installation by July 1, 1999, the beginning of the fiscal year. We went live with it on June 28, 1999.
Our training consisted of a few consultants coming in & showing us how to take applications for new accounts. Some of the higher level staff got a bit more training, but not much. I am a billing clerk. I do not currently deal with the public on a regular basis, although it is part of my job. Yes, I need to learn how to take an app. But I also need to learn how to properly bill 50,000 customers, thank you very much.
As a result, thousands and thousands of customers got incorrect bills. Now, most of the bills were actually correct, but because we’d had so many problems with bad bills, we started cutting all of the customers slack. If a customer comes in with a high bill due to actual usage (I work in water, BTW), we’ll tell them that since they did use the water, they are responsible for the payment. If that doesn’t make the customer happy (which it usually doesn’t), they can request a water hearing. If they go to hearing, what’ll happen is this: We’ll explain why the bill is right. Then we’ll take back half the bill, as a “good faith” gesture. Happens every time.
We have given back hundreds of thousands of dollars to customers who really don’t deserve to get it back. In many cases, though, the customer is genuinely right, and we’re happy to correct the mistake. No one in the billing department where I work has a problem at all with saying “Whoops! Our fault! Sorry! We’ll fix that pronto!” But that’s probably because we’re small and local, and the majority of us live in the city and have to pay the same bills as everyone else. We also know that our computer system is horribly screwed up, and the customers are suffering for it.
We’re sorry, really we are. But City Council made us take this piece-o’-s*** system, and we’re doing the best we can.
A water pipe split on our property once. Got a huge water statement, naturally. So the missus called them up ranting & raving [that was her speciality] & get this, they said they would pay for the water!..
I just got finished doing battle with AT&T a few days ago, and got pretty much everything I wanted. To make a long story short, their telemarketer signed me up for a calling plan different than the one he offered me ($9.95/mo in fees vs. $0/mo, 60 free minutes/mo for 6 months vs. 120 minutes), and I was also overcharged for a call I made. Over the course of a week and a half I had to make four different phone calls to AT&T, talk to six different people, and wait for two people who they claimed would call me back but never did. I finally was able to talk to a competent manager who fixed the overcharge, gave me the minutes, and credited my account for 6 months of monthly fees.
I think they’re damn lucky that I wound up talking to a person who could fix the problem when I did. At that point I was very close to leaving AT&T permanently, telling everyone I know about the situation and encouraging them to leave AT&T, and probably posting a long rant about it here
Mr. Feely
I call someone in Englad a lot. I have a calling plan that makes this cost less than a dime a minute. We moved recently, but not far enough to change phone numbers. Although we told them repeatedly we wanted the phone service exactly the change they dropped us from all out calling plans. It took six months for all the hassles to clear up. Every month I would call and work with a customer rep and sort out what i really owed and then pay that. The amount I actually owed was a tenth of what I was billed. The kept being nasty and threatening to cut off our phone service. We kept up and won.
Oh, joy – finally some place to vent my spleen on my former ISP.
I was a FlashNet customer for over three years. I cut over to them when they offered unlimited access for a flat annual fee that worked out to $13 or so per month. Good connections, few busy signals, no problems. I recommended them to all my family and friends who were looking for new ISPs. I train computers to other employees at work, and gave away over 100 FlashNet CD-ROMs in my weekend “How to Get on the Internet” classes.
For the last year I was with them I purchased a second e-mail address for a flat yearly charge ($35 or something like that). When the address was about to expire I called them to ask when the year of service for that address would be up and would they please not renew it.
Now, buried away in their Terms of Service agreement is a little clause about sending all service cancellation requests in writing. But did the phone person bother to tell me that when I called? (The correct answer starts with “N” and ends with an “o”.)
About three months later I’m perusing my Visa bill and find a $5 charge on it. I look back and find that FlashNet has been charging me $5/month for the address I thought had expired. So I cheerfully call FlashNet, explain that I no longer use the extra address, and ask them to reverse the $15 in charges. The lady says no, they can’t do that – they have this policy about cancellations in writing, you see. I explain this has been a mistake, I wasn’t aware of this policy, I’ve been a good customer, can you please make an exception. The lady says no, she can’t make an exception. I ask to talk to her supervisor. She puts me on hold for a LO-O-O-O-O-ONG time, then comes back and says her supervisor says no, they can’t reverse the charge. With my blood pressure rising I remind her of “the customer’s always right” principle, and she says she’s sorry, I used the service so I gotta pay for it. Me: [SLAM.]
I call my credit card issuer and tell them I want to dispute the $15 charge. They do. About a week later I can’t log in when I dial up to FlashNet. I call. The nice lady says my account’s been suspended for failure to pay the charge.
Now I’m pissed. I cancelled my account on the spot.
What a stupid waste. I’d been a great customer: Always paid on time, referred over one hundred people, even handed out their damn software. And they’re not willing to make an exception for a measly $15.
What a stupid company. Customer service wins every time, FlashNet. Learn that or die.
<soapbox>
TO ALL DOPERS: DON’T USE FLASHNET INTERNET SERVICE.
</soapbox>
Personally, I don’t fight battles on electric bills; those little slips of paper aren’t enough room to stand on, let alone fight.
I do have a fairly good story to relate about phone service. About a month ago, I was getting more than the usual number of wrong numbers, but didn’t really care much. Went out of town for the weekend, and come back with this really confused-sounding message left for me : “Hi, this is AOL phone service; we seem to have connected your phone number with another customer who just signed up, and the bill hasn’t been paid … so we’re gonna go ahead and disconnect your long distance. You’ll need to contact us at 1-800-XXX-XXXX.” Well gee, maybe the guy hasn’t paid 'cause it’s my line that’s been connected!
I dial long distance and it’s working okay, so I wait a day to see what happens. (I thought it might actually have been a wrong number since they didn’t verify my phone number in their message). Sure enough, my long distance calling no longer works ( I had to use a calling card to dial far away). But I don’t want to call AOL, I want to call Pac Bell, since they’re the ones that have to register my carrier, and how’d they manage to change? I call PacBell the next day.
I get a real nice guy named Mike answering the phone, and I ask him how this switch was done without my knowledge, and he looks at my account and says, “Oh, they really screwed you up good …” and I’m wondering who to yell at first at AOL when Mike says, “Look, why don’t I just switch you back to your plan, who you had before, your local toll-plan, and all, and we’ll just send the bill to them for it. So you aren’t going to get charged for signing up; just confirm this with my manager first.” So I talk with the manager and have to say, yes, I really do want to switch my service even though I never knew about the other switch, and the call’s over.
I didn’t get charged for the switch, but I never found out who switched me over in the first place. And I’m not even sure now if it was AOL, since my bill the next month says I had switched to and back from “The Phone Company”, unless that’s what AOL phone service calls itself. I imagined that smart-ass lady from the SNL commercial did it.
panama jack
We’re the Phone Company. We don’t care. We don’t have to.
I’m now worried about a battle with the bank just to get a copy of my payment checks. They claim I have to pay $1 each, and wait 10 days to get a fiche print. But now it’s been 2 weeks, no checks, they said they were sent the day I called, and I’ll have to pay again “if you don’t want to wait”.
Agggh!
This isn’t a battle so much as a story of utility foot-dragging. Our local phone company owed us $8000… Husband was paying our ISDN bills for numerous months but when submitted for reimbursement, employer paid phone company (again) instead of husband. So we had an $8000 credit on the phone bill and would like it back, thank you very much. Try getting a utility to cut you a check for that amount. Months of calls, someone saying it was all ready to go, then find out needs yet another authorization… Then last week my husband called again, got some employee who was on the ball. She was aghast at the delay. Not only did she personally push it along, she Fed Exed it to us. I’ll bet she’s already been fired for competence.
We also just found out we’ve been billed incorrectly for three years–gas company mismarked our meters, which we only found out when they tried to cut off our neighbor’s gas and instead cut off ours. Last I heard they were going to “rebill” us for any corrections (and there are sure to be some since we use more gas than our neighbor). I am rubbing my hands in giddy anticipation of that battle…
Uh, okay, back to your question. I had the phone company stiff me for a year of “service plan” bullshit that I never noticed since my roommate handled the math on the bill. I never ordered it but the hag at customer service insisted we had. I gave up and just stayed crabby but a few years later I learned that our state attorney general was nailing them for signing customers up for it (and charging them) without their consent. So do what I shoulda done: bitch higher up. If it’s something enough people have whined about, maybe they’ll get their chops busted.
Al Phosgene, I am not sure what you mean by “seasonalized” but, if it is what I think (when they sort of even out the monthly payments), then it is an option which the customer can choose or reject.
I, not having a life, have had the time and patience to pursue several of these battles, mostly with the phone co. In the end i mostly came out on top in the sense that I got reimbursed but that is because I was extremely persistent for months on end. If I had a real life and my time was worth anything, then I doubt it would be worth it. And, of course, this is what they count on, that people have better things to do with their time.
I had (and maybe still have) a battle with Compuserve who billed me over $4000 by mistake as related here http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=20975
Oh, Jack. That is too funny.
I don’t know if I can get into trouble for saying too much, but let me just tell you that I used to work for The AOL Long Distance Savings Plan.
They are listed with the LECs (Local Exchange Carriers - ie. Pac Bell) as The Phone Company.
The mistakes I’ve seen made in that building are simply mind-boggling.