My mother had a business phone line with AT&T which my sister helped set up the plans and services. When my mother retired I attempted to setup call forwarding for that business phone number. To my surprise a cryptically titled item "SimpleLink Enhanced MMRC" changed from ~$8 credit to ~$26 charge every month.
I did not get the full story of what this plan/service was 6 months latter. Every month I would talk to an apologetic supervisor would offer a few dollars of credit and assure me that the plan was terminated and the charge would not reoccur. Every month brought a bill with the ~$26 charge which prompted another phone call. Once they even suggested that it might take some time for the cancellation to be processed, suggesting that I should ignore the next bill and look for the charge to be eliminated on the following bill. All the while accumulating ~$26 a month.
I get the full story after I have the account transferred from my mothers name to mine, which seems to have terminated the program. In April my sister signs mom up for this program that will provide the ~$8 as long as we are billing a minimum of $45 dollars, which costs ~26 when our bill falls below that figure. This is a reoccurring year long contract, which renewed for a second year in April after AT&T sent use a cryptic letter explaining what we had to do to cancel in February 2008. At that time I was helping mom with post brain-injury therapies. In May we reduced our service charges below this limit and incurred the charge. In October by closing the account, we were charged ~$26 for every month remaining in the contract through April ~$180. I doubt that my sister would have signed up for this plan if it was fully explained to her. AT&T certainly made no attempt to explain it to me during those 6 months, I suspect hoping to capture another year by running the clock.
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