In March, I inquired about charges on my account, which later made sense to me. In the same conversation, I chose to cancel my plan because I was given a better offer at Sprint. However, I chose to stay with AT&T after a Mr. Martinez informed me that I could upgrade 1 phone on my line to an iPhone 6, my bill would drop from $150.93 to $129.07 per month including an upgrade (I have a copy of this conversation saved). However, to my surprise my next bill was $146.96. When I called inquiring about this, I was told that Mr. Martinez had ‘lied’ to me, and that there was no way for my services to be that cheaper price for the services I have. In June, my bill increased again because of ‘overage’ charges, which I was never informed of. This time, the agent was sincere, admitted that AT&T had never attempted to inform me of the overage change, and refunded that fee. Today, however, when I spoke to a supervisor, I was rudely informed that those notifications of coming close to overage are a ‘courtesy and not something AT&T has to do. I believe it was in that same call that I inquired about why my automatic billing date was changed from the 10th of the month to the 4th, which is when I was informed AT&T decided to change those dates in certain areas without notification. I then asked if there was any way I could have my billing date changed back to the 10th, for my personal finances/pay periods to synchronize with AT&T and the rest of my bills. She said no problem & that was it. Jumping forward to the next month, I see a charge of $107.93 due 9/04/2015, and then another charge of $265.57 due 9/14/2015. I called inquiring about this on 8/26/15 and was told that, because I had my billing date changed (back) to the 10th of every month, I was being charged “prorated” charges, and also that I was being charged prorated charges for the change that AT&T did initially without informing any of those whose billing dates they changed.
My issue is not so much with the monetary amounts or discrepancies with AT&T as a company, but that I feel I have been manipulated repeatedly. I believe that Mr. Martinez intentionally told me a false price in order to a) make a commission, b) keep me as an AT&T company and c) create an extremely difficult situation if I ever wanted to cancel again (I was told that I would have to pay upwards of $800 to cancel my services today, most of that for the iPhone 6 I upgraded to after being told my bill would drop). And today, I was told that although the customer service representative who changed my billing date should have informed me of the prorated charges, she did not, and there is nothing AT&T is willing to do to help the situation besides repeat my issues to me and tell me I have to pay $265.57 (for two lines).
My question is, what are AT&T policies on customer services in the billing department and what happens to customer services agents who a) lie to customers b) provide inacurate or missing information and c) are unprofessional in manner toward customers?
[Edited for privacy-please do not post personal or unique information such as but not limited to full names, employee ID numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, etc.]