Three men came in to my office and explained that they worked for AT & T and were visiting all small businesses in the area due to the fact that they were looking in to the fact that we were being over charged for our services and that they would be able to reduce them. They asked to see my last telephone bill.
I was paying between $178 and $198 per month for two lines and DSL. They said that they would be able to save me money. I asked them what my total bill would be if I added another line. They said it would be $143.00 without taxes. This was for the 3 lines and DSL and they said there would be no charge for adding the extra line.
They also mentioned that I would get a rebate of $100 because of the over charges on past bills When the engineer came to add the additional line I asked him if this was free of charge again just to make sure. He told us that it was not, so I told him that we were not interested in going ahead with it, as this is not what we were told by their sales people.
He telephoned his office and they agreed to goahead and connect the additional line for $50. So finally I agreed to this additional charge to connect the extra line. When my bill arrived it was over $500. We were astonished and telephoned them immediately to try and find out why it was as high as it was.
We explained exactly what had happened, they told us that the men did not work for AT & T directly, and were a contracted company and that they would not use them again. We found out that they were charging $199 for the DSL aloan and had charged more than the agreed $50 for the connection of the additional line.
They told us that there were not 3 line packages with DSL included for $143.00 even though this is what we had been told. Finally they told us it would be $178 total for everything. They agreed to credit the overcharges. Every month they still carry over the additional charges.
To this date and this has been since February this year I have been paying off the money we owe each month which seems to go up every month for instance this bill is $287.10 for current charges and we now only have two lines. Each month they have carried over 272.67 and this is creaping up as they are adding late fees.
When I received May's bill we telephoned again and they just stopped even saying they would credit the money. So we wrote a letter and faxed it to AT&T The customer service person we spoke to had told us that if we did not write and say that we didn't want our contract automatically renewed then it would just be renewed as this was in the small print of our original contract. This would have been for a further 3 years.
In this letter we asked AT&T to cancel the extra line we also asked for a complete breakdown of the changes to our service back in February of this year what they were charging us and all credits that had been made to our account after talking to them each month and what they were for. As the bill was not going down.
I also told them I would pay all current charges. However these seem to be going up every month also. This month they are now threatening that if we do not pay all back charges they will have to interrupt our service, (I suppose this would mean cut us off). They have not given us the breakdown as we requested.
We are a small business in holistic health care there is just the 2 of us in the office and we cannot sustain these sort of charges we only work 3 days a week.
To add insult to injury they have also listed us in the yellow pages incorrectly for the last 3 years even though each year we have asked them to sort this out. When anyone telephones enquiries for our number they are given the dedicated fax number.
If it wasn't for our business cards and referrals, we certainly would not have survived. This error has been carried over to other telephone books in our area as they use AT&T's book as a reference. It has been a complete nightmare.
I am at a loss, what can I do about this and who can help us.
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