"My name is Juanita Johnson how can I help you today?
"Ma'am," I said, "I can barely hear you."
"We must have a bad connection would you like to call back?"
"No, I'd really like to get this resolved."
"Certainly sir, what is your account number?"
I gave her the account number and she answers, "I show an unpaid balance going back to September of last year -- $343.89 -- would you like to pay that today?"
"No ma'am. I need an accounting of those charges." She then begins to read them to me and I stop her. "Ma'am, I need copies of these invoices on account balances going back 11 months. Why in the world didn't AT&T shut us off in October for an unpaid balance?"
"We do that as a service for you sir; as part of your small business account."
"Well," I explained," it's not a service for us."
I asked them to fax copies of all the bills going back to September 2009, and told my son to get his bank statements going back to August, and I spent the next night reconciling them. AT&T had faxed the statements, eight pages for each month. A coversheet for each month, a disclaimer. A blank page with an unknown address and telephone number then a dispute resolution instruction page and finally three pages of charges for each month.
As I began to piece the puzzle together I discovered that January invoices were missing. The bank statement showed two payments to AT&T for that month. I feel certain the kind folks at AT&T just made a mistake, a convenient accidental mistake. So after several hours of work I pieced together what was going on -- the September shortage had been made up with the January payment -- the one they forgot to send the statement for.
I called and was put on hold, "We are experiencing unusually high call volume; please stay on the line and a customer service representative will be with you shortly."
I took a sip of my coffee and muttered, "I bet that's right!"
Then the recording droned on, "Did you know that you can answer many questions and pay your bill online -- at our website?" Then I got the happy droid who put me through to the business office. After I explained the situation I was transferred to "the enforcer," his name was Richard but let's keep this friendly and just call him Dick. Dick was stoically combative and refuted every charge. He immediately latched onto the age of the discrepancy and declared, "I'm not going to make any adjustments on an account balance going back that far!"
I answered, "Why not! It was your company's decision to carry this balance in the first place." Dick and I went round and round for about 20 minutes, and his goal was obviously to anger me and to misdirect the issue so at some later date AT&T could claim to have attempted to resolve this issue. Every figure that I quoted to Dick, well, Dick had a different figure. When I said "$26.35," Dick said, "I have here on your statement $25.55 and I show an adjustment of .34 cents not .48." But the totals always matched. What Dick was saying subliminally was that I didn't know what I was talking about. I asked Dick about the dispute resolution form that they had sent me eight of, and told him, "We're willing to meet you half way, we're willing to pay what we owe, but since you're not willing to work with us, we'll pay you nothing!"
Dick said, "Then let me transfer you over to dispute resolution." He added, "You might be called by AT&T and asked to complete a survey about my performance today." I replied, "I won't answer any survey for AT&T, because if I tell them that you were arbitrary and combative they'd put a gold star in your folder, besides I don't work for AT&T."
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