Tales from IT: My first AT&T business support interaction
At my work we had a billing issue on a set of POTS lines we ordered from AT&T after the Lumen fiasco. Basically we were expecting a bill approximately $150 a month and our first bill ended up being over $500 with indications on the bill that the monthly was going to be $570+.
For a spoiler – it wasn’t, it was just a badly formatted first bill that indicated a one month timeframe in one section, did not mention a previous month and a half… but let’s go through what I had to do to learn this. Keep in mind, time is money, and this interaction cost.
I called up the AT&T Business number, entered our AT&T Business account number, and was informed I would have to hold for 27 minutes but that I could be called back. I opted for the call back and went about my business. At 25 minutes or so I got a call back.
I informed the person what the situation was and was informed by the rep that I had been called back not by the business section, but by residential… what followed was 30+ minutes on hold as the residential person kept calling the business section and yeah… Once the person chimed in asking who they were speaking with and attempted to tell my issue back to me because the business side dropped and the connection went right over to me.
About 42 minutes into the call we reached the department that should have called me back and they began looking at why the bill was so high. The FCC charges were for each month, the state charges were for when the line was activated (which was on the 20th) the AT&T charges were for when 2 of the lines went live (20th) and also from the 21st for the third (problem) and the bill listed the timeframe as May x – June x but covered April xx – June x. There was also an install fee.
Basically the bill was for 3 full months for one thing, 2.3 months for another, a base charge of $190 per line that was being discounted by $140 a month per line and it listed the timeframe as one single month … yeah, was confusing and I still contend how it’s presented is wrong but whatever.
At 52 minutes and 19 seconds we ended the call.
I have no idea how to reach AT&T Business and get a call back because I called AT&T Business and asked for a callback.
