I had been an AT&T customer (land line and wireless) for years. I was a heavy user of telecom services. After one of my moves, when I opened a new long distance service account they sent me a calling card unsolicited. I normally cut them up, but I must have just thrown this one away.
Months later, I got a bill for about $50 for calling card calls. Apparently they were all made from payphones in my area to other numbers in the general area. I informed AT&T that these were not my calls and asked that they take care of it.
They put me on hold then told me that they would take care of it. A minute later they told me that they had verified that I was the one who had made the calls. I couldn't believe what they were saying. I asked them how the hell they had "verified" this. They told me that they called the person and that they claimed that they knew me.
I demanded that they provide me the number that they called and I called the number. Some kid answered. I explained the situation to him and expressed my surprise as I didn't think that I knew him. He said, "yeah I know you. We hang out at the beach. You have long hair. Etc etc etc"... Well suffice it to say that I don't hang out at the beach, don't have long hair, etc etc etc. Apparently the operator just called and asked if he knew an "*MY FIRSTNAME*"..
So I call back and explain the situation to the fraud department and tell them they can call the guy back to verify. They won't call back. I said, "fine — call any other number on the list" — they refused. Their policy is to just call a single number. They said I had no recourse and would just have to pay the bill.
I didn't know what else to do — so I just ended up paying it. I canceled my long distance service and my cell phone with them immediately and have refused ever since to do business with them.
It wasn't the money that mattered. $50 wasn't even worth a 30 minutes of my time — but I was *SO* mad that I was being ripped off by them.
Ian
Los Angeles, California
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