The boiler plate responses don’t work. Call AT&T - don’t work. Ask for a manager at AT&T - don’t work. Threaten AT&T - don’t work.
Write the state consumer fraud division - don’t work. Write my elected officials - don’t work.
Discontinue AT&T is problematic as the number is on letterheads and business cards all over the Western US and it might be of some benefit to use this number.
I had no trouble when I called AT&T and told them to remove those charges from my bill. I spoke to a person. They did what they dad. The charges went a way.
New charges came back a few months later, but that’s a different story.
This is the real problem. Having to call once, or even twice, on occasion, is part of what we expect doing business. I’m plagued with several each month, now in the fourth month. Beginning to be an annoyance.
Some say some states have better consumer fraud divisions. Nevada now has none, the state cut off all their money.
AT&T does not own your phone number. Transfer it to another company.
That law went into effect for cell phones a few years ago. I didn’t know that it applies to landlines too. Does it really?
It was a landline law for years before cell.
From FCC Consumer Facts:
Under the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) “local number portability” (LNP) rules, so long as you remain in the same geographic area, you can switch telephone service providers, including interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, and keep your existing phone number. If you are moving from one geographic area to another, however, you may not be able to take your number with you. Therefore, subscribers remaining in the same geographic area can now switch from a wireless, wireline, or VoIP provider to any other wireless, wireline, or VoIP provider and still keep their existing phone numbers.
Be sure to transfer the number before you cancel your AT&T account or you lose it and can’t transfer it.
Perhaps if you will indeed switch carriers you should research whether this is likely to also happen with the company you will transfer to.
This happened to me with Sprint (now Embarq, trying to hide from their horrible customer service,) and not only did they not take off the charges until the other company agreed (which they did, eventually, thankfully,) they expected me to pay the third party charges to avoid a late fee. Which is dubious enough when it’s only 50$ or so but what’s to stop someone falsely charging $2000 and then having me on the hook for it, losing interest and opportunity cost, until I can prove that I should not be paying it?
(Plus, occasionally I get calls from Embarq asking me to use them, and when I tell them that I do not purchase Embarq because of their horrible customer service when they were Sprint, they just say “oh, okay, bye,” instead of asking me what the problem was. Or volunteering to make it okay with reimbursement. Not caring enough about what a problem actually is isn’t improving anything people!
What is this “third party billing” of which ye speak?
The calls are coming from sales people, who get paid based on the number of customers they sign up. They wouldn’t get anything for solving your past problems, so why should they waste any time on that?
Besides, they almost certainly don’t have the access or authority to actually be able to do anything about your past problems, even if they wanted to.
Of course that thought crossed my mind. But receiving pure sales calls does nothing to better my appreciation for their customer service.