Here's a helpful heads-up. . . .
Do your customer service BS with AT&T by chat. They will lie to you by chat the same as they will lie to you over the phone, but you can save the chat.
Then, when they overcharge you next month, you can contact your CC provider and get it adjusted, and tell them you have it in writing. AT&T will not challenge the chargeback.
Do that every month and eventually AT&T will just take what they said they would. I got ours down from $119 to $77, and got CC credits for each month they overcharged getting to the $77. I think it took from July until November.
They have not jacked with it since.
I don't know of any service provider (cell, cable, satellite, et al) whose front line customer service is empowered to do squat. Like in getting rid of our timeshare, in our little LLC (Living Life Company), I am the VP of BS, and have developed the most effective tactics for each of them.
It used to be at the very least an annual battle with most of them as they jacked their prices or service failed.
With DISH I began to forward issues to corporate, and a few years back we wound up with a personal assistant on the executive team, whom I call the grandson I never had. He got us a second receiver for our second home, on the same account, and when we have them both active it's only an extra $17/month. When the local CBS provider was doing their annual Super Bowl holdout a couple years ago, he sent us an OTA module, so we watched it OTA (and on DISH that year because the dispute get settled). Last year it did not for the playoffs and Super Bowl. On a good night (seldom day), we can get over 30 free channels on DISH.
Before doing the chat thing with AT&T, I would call corporate to get things fixed/settled.
We got One Price for Life ($45 month) for Centurylink Internet.
I told Comcast/Xfinity that I would pay them a fair amount each month, including the months we were not there, instead of their Snowbird program where they jacked the price up when you resume, and they put me on $45/ for prepaid internet, which is even better since it is only the months we are there.
Don't even get me going on insurance companies, and absolutely don't mention State Farm, who cancel us three or four years ago after I had been with them since 1966. We were cancelled because we actually used it, but we used it the way our agents and their adjusters encouraged us to. Most importantly, I think, is that we actually used our PLU, the way our agent said we could when he sold it to us, which, of course, I had in writing (email) and saved.
You cannot deal with service companies without a strategy, and they intentionally make customer service inconvenient and time-consuming.
"Hi, my name is Bob."
"No it's not. It's more like Madhavaditya."
Last edited: