I received this letter in the mail today from SBC:
"We would like to talk to you about the outstanding balance on your former telephone account. We would also like to offer you the opportunity to regain sBC services after you have paid the outstanding amounts.
We have not received payment in the amount of $81.19. If you have not made your payment, please do so immediately or call us to make satisfactory payment arrangements."
The interesting thing is, I've called and discussed this matter with SBC no less than three (3) times. I moved out of my apartment at the end of July, canceled my SBC telephone line and DSL at that time. I called at the beginning of July, and asked whether I should pay my last bill, and they said no. Then I called at the end of July to cancel my service and the operator said I should get a refund. I looked over the bill and it looked like I should have paid the last one they had sent at the beginning of July, but the woman at SBC told me not to, so I didn't. It was in the amount of $46.
Then I get a bill in the mail for $81.19. I called up SBC and explained that I probably did owe $46 but definately did not owe $81.19. The woman agreed with me after looking over the account and told me to disregard the bill and they would send me a revised one. I forgot about SBC until today when I got this letter. Come on folks, how hard is it!
You know, a long time ago, I thought the phone company really, really had it together.
ReplyDeleteThen I grew up and had to start dealing with SBC.
Or more accurately, SBC's customer service. I don't think I've seen any other company with as poor of customer service and billing departments. Except maybe Sprint - will be interesting to see what happens with the Nextel merger, since everyone seems to love Nextel.
I don't even want to think about the number of times I've gone round and round with SBC over getting their DSL pricing straight. And the DSL isn't even that great (slow, slow, slow).
If I could get Charter's cable modem service without the cable (my Dish satellite is many times better than Charter Digital), I'd drop SBC in a heartbeat.
Assuming they could figure out how to cancel my service, that is...
yeah so I ended up oweing $69.82....why you ask? Aparently the DSL and telephone lines are on different billing cycles, so the $47 that I owe is for July 1-31 on telephone and June 6-july 5 on DSL, so I still owed for July 5-29 on DSL. However they had charged too much for it so the lady changed the charge down from $81-$69. (and of course she's the second one that I dealt with...after being on hold for 10 minutes) How messed up is that.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it amazing that the bigger a comapny gets, and the more resources it has available, the less effective it becomes? We recently had our natural gas line from the street to the house replaced by Laclede Gas. They sent us a postcard in the mail stating our line was on the list to be replaced. When we called to see if we could get a time frame for the work, Laclede's Customer Service Department told us their was no work order for our address. When we then asked why we got a notice in the mail, we were again told there was no work order for our address. Two days later, a crew showed up and changed the gas line! We refrained from asking the repair folks how they could proceed without a work order.
ReplyDelete