phone company HATRED
 

This is long, but I need the space to fully explain the problem. Thanks in advance for reading all the way through.

More than a year ago my wife and I switched from SBC/Ameritech to TalkAmerica. When my wife was almost 9 months pregnant the phone went dead. Ameritech would have repaired it for free since it is their line, but since we were no longer through Ameritech we had to pay TalkAmerica $80 for them to fix the problem.

On the afternoon they scheduled to come over to fix the phone, I was at work.

Let me mention that we were living on the 4th floor of an apartment building.

Anyway, my wife, being pregnant, wanted to make sure she had a phone to call me at work in case she gave birth, and when the guy did not come to fix the phone, she went to a pay phone to call and ask where the guy was. She was told that the technician had showed up, knocked on the door, and left a note on the door when no one answered.

Now I will add that she would have heard a knock with no problem, its not like the apartment is 20,000 square feet with Rammstein blasting on the stereo. And there was no note on the door.

She told the woman on the phone that no one had, in fact, knocked on the door. The woman believed her, saying that normally they charge $80 extra if the person is not home for them to let the technician in, but they would probably waive that since he went to the wrong apartment.

A day or 2 later someone came and fixed the phone.

When we got our phone bill, we saw they had added $80 for the repair and another $80 for us not being there the first time. I called the people and paid off the bill, all of it besides the $80, which was charged to us erroneously. I told the woman on the phone that I was disputing this charge. She put in a "request for adjustment" and told me to call back in a week or so. I did, and was told the request was denied, and I still owed the money. So, I agrued with the next person, where they put ion ANOTHER request; I made sure all details were entered, including how my wife was attentive to a knock on the door because she was anxious to call me at work because she potentially could have given birth any time, and there was no note left on the door saying the techician was there. Again, this request was denied by some part of the company I was not allowed to speak to personally. The only people I talked to were phone operators who were actually pretty sympathetic to my story. I kinda forgot about the whole thing (we had since gone back to SBC/Ameritech) when we got another bill saying we owed the $80 or they were putting into collections. I called for another request for adjustment AND wrote the president of the company. The letter went unanswered, and the request was once again denied. To add to my anger, I would get phone calls, some machine saying we owed TalkAmerica $80.

I called again, super pissed, and made the people let me talk to the highest person there. I ended up talking to the supervisor or something, and the road ended there. He said the reason the requests were denied was because the technician insisted that he had indeed went to the correct apartment. In reality, he probably got off the wrong floor on the elevator, but that was not a possibility to this guy.

I asked him something like "theoretically, what if this guy did go to the wrong apartment, why do you still give him the benefit of the doubt?" to which he responded something to the effect of how my wife was probably sleeping. Oh, and the note wasn't on the door because my wife took it off or someone stole it (?!).

So now this is on our credit report, I suppose I could pay it, but I don't see why I should give TalkAmerica $80 to be complete ASSHOLES. I told the guy I was going to write my story the the Letters to the Editor page of the local paper, along with typing my story and putting it on the windshield of evey car at the mall to spread the bad work of TalkAmerica, but if anyone has any reasonable ideas of what I can do to get out of this debt I don't even owe, please let me know. Oh, and never go the TalkAmerica, they suck shit.

*edit- I should add there was no way she was sleeping because she was taking care of her 1 and a half year old son at the time.

Wow, dude. I've heard lots of bad stories about customer service at telcos, but this one takes the cake!

It's obvious they don't care about you enough, since $80 is probably nothing compared to your phone bills over a year's time...

That's it, really. You should threaten to switch to another provider.

Actually, we did switch back to the original company from TalkAmerica after they denied the first request for adjustment.

I should add that we still owed the original company, SBC/Ameritech about 50 bucks, but when we signed back up with them, the lady cleared the balance. For no reason, she was just like "here, let me take care of that for you, welcome back." It was pretty awesome.

Yeah, you have 2 choices. Either pay the $80 or have an attorney call them. In all likelihood, it is easier and cheaper to just pay the $. It stinks, but that's the way things go sometimes.

Hrmm.

At least TWC (Time Warner Cable) is usually happy to refund things. One good trait of their's I guess.

You don't know what a bad Telco company is until you've lived in Australia.

Haha, poor Oz people have Telstra. :lol:

I'd say pay the bill. They lost you as a customer. Tough shit, you know.

k i used to work for comcast, it works the same way there. in all honesty all you can do is get the ADDRESS of the customer complain dept. and write in a very detailed but not hotheaded explaination of what happened.

plus try and get the address of a local office where they can access accounts.

as for the "put in a request" thing, that too, is the way comcast works.
theres actually an adjustment supervisor who doesnt answer any calls, they just go through account by account, read the notes on the account (usually poorly written) and determines if the person deserves the credit.

unfortunatley, denial ONCE, will only further support them when they deny you again because they have documented that they already denied the credit once.

bass ackwards I know, I hated working there because there were so many people being screwed over.

If anyone here lives in Florida, I will give you $20 to throw rotton eggs at their headquarters.

I know in some states you can contact a public utilites board. But I don't know if this would apply to your state or not.

I hate ALL the TELECOMS they all suck...
and contact the State Attorney General, the Better Business Beaurau and of course, the FCC.

good luck!

If they had told you up front it would cost you $160 to fix your phone, would you have paid it?

Pull your credit and dispute it. It's an inaccuracy.

i take it your in the USA, in the UK we have a company called Trading standereds, they are there to make sure this sort of thing dont happen, write lots of letters, they are cheeper, to local MPs, Watchdog type people, complaints to talk america, anybody in charge of them, write to newspapers local and national, write to the news, make your voice heard, or take them to court over it and sue,.

Thats besides the point, they shouldnt lie and cheat and blatenly refuse to be nice to their customers