Hey AT&T. You have been a monopoly too long.
I’ve been a customer of AT&T, Southwestern Bell, Southern Bell, Bell South and whatever other names of your wholly owned subsidiaries. For a long time it was the only game in town. Then one day I woke up and had an epiphany: why am I paying $50 per month for a land line when I contact everybody I know using my cell phone. Sure, it’s convenient when I want to receive a robo-call anytime Steve Cohen is running for office. Or for when a collection agency wants to contact the lady who lived here 11 years ago. For a long time, I kept it for fax purposes. Then I did the math.
My wife, Vicki, had been on me for a while to cancel the service. Seems it was not that long ago that she also had asked me to cancel MCI as our long distance carrier. She was right (again). In April of last year, I contacted AT&T and asked them to cancel our home phone service. But we had been such a good customer, and one of their valued members since 19XX. Whenever. Whatever. The lady on the phone, whose only job is to keep people like me from cancelling their service sounded SO disappointed. She was sorry to see us go.
Our bill was due on April 17th, and was debited from our bank account automatically on that date. Fine, I thought. We’re done. Two weeks later I get a refund check from AT&T in the amount of $.03. Apparently April is a shorter month, and they wanted to make sure everything was square.
I laughed that this big conglomerate would process a check that cost more to mail than the check amount. I never cashed the check. To me it was worth more than $.03 for the laugh.
Fast forward to earlier this year. AT&T has still been billing us for the service that we cancelled and have not used since April, 2010. Last year. The matter has now been turned over to a collection agency. AFNI has offered to settle for $.50 cents on the dollar. Hmmm. Thanks, but no thanks.
I guess a company that is losing customers everyday thinks they can get money by billing former dissatisfied customers for the services they no longer use. Good luck with that. Funny, you don’t see many Fox Photo kiosks around much any more.
