I received an email from AT&T informing me I had been awarded $25 gift certificate for opting to use their no-paper email billing system. Great! When I went on line I discovered the rip off.

In order to use the certificate one had to choose a restaurant. Despite the fact that there were no restaurants near where I live, I scoped out those in cities I could drive to. Then I discovered that in order to use the $25 gift certificate - depending on the type of restaurant - I had to order at least $30, $45, or$50 or more of food. Then I saw that restaurants tagged on anything from 18%-27% gratuity BEFORE deducting the gift certificate.

If this was not enough, some restaurants only issued $10 gift certificate (no mention as to what one could get for the balance).

So, then I opted to use the $25 gift certificate for merchandise and went to the fruit section to discover I would need to order $75 worth of product and pay shipping & handling.

I am a senior citizen living on minimum income. Why would I opt to drive long distance to a restaurant to pay $20 or more just to redeem the AT&T certificate.

I tried telephoning AT&T but they put me through to Restaurant.com. First, after explaining the difficulties in using the certificate I asked if I could receive $25 to use at other restaurants closer to home, or have it put as a credit against my telephone/DSL bill. Not understanding that I was talking with Restaurant.com the answer was no. I requested to speak with a supervisor and she just said that it was their organization that sells the gift certificates to AT&T and that is the way it is set up.

In my opinion AT&T can keep their gift certificates - they are worth nothing if they cannot be used to redeem $25 worth of product.

I hope others will complain about this so AT&T understand that giving with one hand and taking with another is typical of today's customer-no-customer service!!!

Maureen Page
Covington, GA