Pacific Bell Cellular
PAC BELL Wireless Billing Scam

Beware the billing scam employed by Pacific Bell Wireless.

Your bill will be printed and held by Pac Bell so that it arrives no sooner than 10 days before the amount becomes delinquent. If the amount is not received by Pac Bell by the due date, the amount is delinquent. Of course, with snail mail delivery times of 3 to 5 days, you must write your check and get it in the mail within a week of receipt. I rarely open my bills and write checks on a daily basis. I prefer to batch the payments and do the chore twice a month. This policy requires that I write a check almost immediately upon receipt of the bill. If the bill were not dependent on current charges, I would be happy to prepare the check a week in advance, and even mail it to the billing department. But the bill varies every month, and I cannot know how much to send, until 10 days before the delinquent date.

I called their customer service, and I was told that there are absolutly no exceptions to this policy. I repeated to anyone who would listen that all I wanted was "a reasonable opportunity to pay my bill in a timely manner, and seven days cannot be considered a reasonable opportunity".

I escallated the issue several levels, and finally, after contacting the office of one of the VP's, I was told that "Because of my excellent credit history, I was granted a 10 day grace period", "But because many of the customers have questionable credit, the policy was required"

Sorry, but this is total crap. The billing policy is devised to trap customers into late payment fees. Nothing less.

To top it all off, the consumer doesn't find out about this gotcha until after they sign a one or more year commitment.

I am also a long standing customer of Pac Bell (land service), and this division of Pac Bell does not subscribe to the same billing policies. I have almost 30 days to pay my land service bill.

I wonder if Pac Bell Corporate knows that this separate entity is giving their company a bad name.

Does anybody know if this falls under the category of a "man trap"?

Company: Pacific Bell Cellular
Country: USA
State: Nationwide
Address: Los Angeles

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