So AT&T made a huge mistake a few years ago, and I'm still suffering because of it.
In January 2008 I went to an AT&T store to change a phone number on my Family Talk plan because I had moved from Illinois to Florida. I only had one phone with me because the other one did not need the number changed. I told the sales associate what I wanted to do, and they said ok. I waited a while and was then handed a brochure of individual plans and put on the phone with customer service. They told me to pick a plan off the brochure. I was confused and asked if that would affect my current account because I had two lines. They said no, so I said ok and picked one. I waited a while longer and was then given a new SIM card for my phone. I left thinking my task had been accomplished.
The next month I received two bills, for instead of changing my number they had opened a whole new account instead. I called and told them my problem, and they said they would fix it so I said ok. Then I got two more bills the next month. I called customer service again and told them I was still having a problem, and they said they would credit me for the overcharge and to only pay the bill for the new account. So again I said ok and hung up thinking the matter had been resolved.
The month after that I got two bills again, but this time my original account had been closed and I had been charged a cancellation fee for both lines that were on the account. This made me pretty mad, because I was not wanting to close my second line. Heck, all I wanted to do in the first place was change a single phone number on my account. I called customer service a few times trying to explain my situation. Most of the representatives weren't helpful at all, but I finally talked to someone who seemed to understand what the problem was, and agreed to credit back the charge for one line because I had opened a new account. But they would not credit me for the second cancellation fee, even after I asked if I could add a second line to my new account to get back to the plan I originally had. Apparently it was my fault for closing the account, even though I had no knowledge of the account being closed until I received the bill with the cancellation fees.
Of course, I decided not to add a second line to my new account because at that point I was ready to drop AT&T altogether. I told them I would not pay the remaining cancellation fee because if they had done what I had wanted in the first place the second phone line would have still been open.
Well, they sent me to collections over it, and again I refused to pay. I've been disputing it on my credit report every year since then because I wasn't able to get anywhere with the collection agency, either. Every year it has been successfully removed, but now this year for some reason they will not take it off. It only has two more years before it comes off my report, but now I have been denied a student loan because a collection exists on my record.
So now I have a $291 collection balance on an original balance of $188 that I was charged because of the company's mistake, and it's keeping me from getting the money I need to finish the education I've been working on for the last 3 years. Three hundred dollars may seem like a trivial amount of money to a huge multibillion dollar corporation like AT&T, but to me it's a lot to pay, especially when I don't feel like the charges were justified to begin with.
Oh and by the way, it's not like I was a deadbeat customer trying to get out of paying my bill. I had opened my original account in 2003 when they were still Cingular and had paid my bill in full and early every month up until this point and every month after until the day my contract expired and I promptly switched to Verizon. So yeah, they lost a loyal customer over this whole ordeal.