This month I am finally saying good bye to AT&T and their little friend Direct TV. We are a military family and get moved around quite a bit. When we first moved to the Tampa area, we were told that Bell South was the only telephone provider in the area, and we were trying to get our utilities set up at our new residence. As all of you probably know by now, Bell South is none other than AT&T, and like many of the banners and ads on the net, we were suckered into the plan that they advertise for $99.99 for your phone, high-speed internet and Direct TV...

Let me say this... last month I paid out $114.14 for just my phone and my internet ( and I only made three outgoing calls on my house telephone), AND another $84.49 for Direct TV... that is $198.63, almost TWICE the rates that AT&T are advertising! I didn't have anything fancy... No premium stations (Just the basic type programming with more informed channels than anything else), no HD, nothing like that at all, except the extra $4.99 for an additional receiver. My internet which was supposed to be $19.95 a month was costing me $49.95 a month. All of this and wait till you hear the loveliness of the rest of the story. AT&T charged me an installation fee to have the service turned on ( which everyone does for the most part) and gave me my phone number. OK I asked if I can have it arranged for the bill to be due on or shortly after the first of the month or on or after the 15th of the month because that way we can focus it around my husbands pay periods. They say no problem... We get a bill due on the 27th of the month. I call and ask them if they can change the bill date... they tell me that they can...IF I want to change my phone number AND pay them $65! I tell them that they will get their money on the first of the month... their representative then proceeds to tell me that since it is my husband's name only on the phone bill that she cannot talk to me, and hangs up. We then decide to buy a house here... we need to have the phone turned off at the old house and on at the new house...we are keeping the same #. Well they charge us another 'establish service fee' and are now paying two at the same time for a period of a few months!

Ever since then I have been dealing with these outrageous always changing phone rates and other charges (last month I paid Direct TV online and their computer system was apparently down... I went through the steps of making the payment online got an e-mail and a confirmation number of my payment) and got called several times by Direct TV asking me where my payment was... I gave them the information that they sent to my e-mail... and they said that they didn't get paid. I checked my bank, and apparently they never debited my account, so I told the rep to re-submit the payment when I was on the phone (for which they charged me $5 that they didn't tell me about I found that on the next month's bill, with a late payment fee of $2.99 due to their screw up.)

I also have the lovely representatives who place a 'courtesy' call to me every month, on the 28th letting me know that my phone bill needs to be paid. They always ask for my husband who is almost never here, but in some other country on the other side of the world someplace... and they say things to me like 'Did you know that your bill was due yesterday?' I am always like I sure did know that my bill was due yesterday, and I have asked you to change the billing date a hundred times. You won't change it for me unless I pay you $65. You will get paid on the first ( and they always get paid in full). Since when did the phone company become loan sharks?

I did a little research and found out that our small local cable company offers HD TV with many more channels than Direct TV, telephone service with unlimited long distance and internet service for $125.64 a month ( including all taxes)... a $70 savings for us... with no strings attached. Guess what... we switched... Direct TV were such scumbags to tell us that we are obligated to keep their rip-off service for 18 months and they can charge us an early termination fee and that they have our bank account numbers and can take our money... blah, blah, blah. In another place we were with SBC who provided excellent service with satellite service and we were under no such obligation... they (Direct TV) told me about the expense of their equipment and how expensive it is, which is what warrants them making you contract for 18 months [which their rep who comes to hook you up never tells you about]. My husband does VOIP and satellite communications currently with the military... he was telling me expensive? Yeah right, it is why they tell you to pull the transmitter off the dish when you discontinue service and the boxes don't work without active cards. They just want you to think that to condone WHY they are going to TRY to charge you for 18 months of service.

In my opinion I think all of us who have been taken advantage of by this company needs to open their mouths and just say NO to this money grubbing company who doesn't care one bit about its customers and only about their profit margins! These people make Verizon look like saints!

AT&T recently let someone open not 1 but 2 accounts using my wife’s identity. She has a 7 year alert on her account with the 3 major credit reporting services. Her name is flagged with AT&T not to let anyone open an account with her name, but they did anyway. I called to ask how this could happen, starting with customer service, then fraud department and then to their credit department. No one could give me an answer. One lady said that they call our home and said my wife OK the accounts. I called her a liar. Now we have been trying to close the accounts. This was the stupidest procedure I have every been through. We have to prove to AT&T who we are before we can close the accounts. It's funny that AT&T can mail us the bill to our address, see our address when we call but they can't take our word we are who we say we are when we try to do them a favour and close these accounts. To close these accounts you must fill out a fraud packet for each account. You must have proof of residence from 3 months prior. I don't know about you but I don't keep 3 and 4 month old Light and Gas bills. I just wish I could talk with a Supervisor from AT&T and ask them what the h%$l is going on with them.

I was just reading all the complaints about AT&T and their "promotion rebate offers." I thought I was alone in this mess! I signed up for phone and internet service in July 2007. It is May 2008 and I still have not received a dime they promised me. I should have received $49.99 for the equipment rebate and $50 each for the phone and internet service. I sent in the paperwork for the equipment rebate and waited. I called and thought the "help" I received was adequate. So I waited again... another 2 months before I called again to check the status. This time I was told that it hadn't processed yet and she would escalate it to her supervisor, which could take up to 2 weeks to hear anything. As you can tell from it being almost a year, I still haven't received anything. I have called repeatedly about the service rebates too, still nothing!

The rebates were only one issue I had with AT&T. It took 5 months for them to finally fix my billing. I ordered my internet service with the wireless router. When I received my shipment it contained a regular modem. I called and they sent the correct router but also included a wireless card (which I did not order.) I returned the modem using the provided return UPS label. I received my next bill and I still had a charge on their for the modem, even though they had received it over 3 weeks previously. Then I noticed I had also been charged $55 for the wireless card. I called again to have that removed and they said I would have to return the card. Again I used the return UPS label provided and sent the box back - this time only containing the very expensive card. Thank goodness for UPS tracking! It was received by their shipping office on 25 Sep 07. When I called they said it hadn't been 'processed' yet by receiving so they couldn't remove the amount from my bill. I called the next week and again received the same answer. Deshaun was the next person I spoke with, again the same answer. This was getting old. They would even put me on hold "to check the status with receiving." Finally on 27 Nov, Florita called the receiving dept and said they had processed the return and the $55 refund would appear on my next bill. Finally I received a truthful answer and my Dec bill was finally correct!

I have never been so unhappy and discontent with a company. Unfortunately, I also have my cell phone service with this company. I wish they had never merged with Cingular! I can't write how displeased I am.

My wife called AT&T and asked for info on DSL service. They said they had it and we decided to change from our current phone company which was offering good phone service for over 3 or 4 yrs, but only offered us dial up internet service and did not have dsl service in our area. After talking with at&t we were very happy to hear our internet would be a little faster with the new dsl service they offered and decided to change both the phone and internet with them. We were even thinking of getting a full package deal and changing our cell phones and satelite service with them. Well since the first day (a Wednesday) we got our phone service it was problem after problem. That same afternoon I found out that we were not receiving phone calls. We could make outgoing calls but no calls would come in. I called and talked to the technition that after noon. Next day nothing was fixed. I made some more calls to see what was going on. Day after that phone was not working still. This day my wife was fed up and called to disconnect service because phone was not working properly and still had no internet, they told her they would get it fixed. I made more calls to try and get it fixed. Finally phone was fixed, but the DSL was not working yet. They told me they would try to get it that day(Friday). Another 3 days went by and no internet service yet. My wife called again about why the internet was not working and spoke with a rep and was told that their was no dsl service in our area. My wife was very dissapointed because main reason we changed phone companys was for the dsl service. My wife asked why they had told her in the first place there was service and to back it up we still had the dsl box whick they had already sent. She then spoke to a manager (Irene Raskon) I believe that is her name. My wife told her she wanted to disconnect and told her she felt we should not pay for any of this service. Plus we had to pay another reconnection fee with our previous company. Manager said we had to pay every thing and denied having any fault. We ended up spending a lot of time on the phone trying to fix all this problems, we were without internet service for about 10 days, no full phone service for 5 days and we even lost our phone number (956)259-6015 because when we went back to our original phone company we had allready disconnected with AT&T and did not have service.

I bought an at&t wirless 2wire modem from at&t store and signed up for dsl. At the time the promo was for a full rebate on the cost of the modem. I mailed in my rebate form. The rebate was promised 3-6 weeks after rebate mail-in. When I didn't receive it after 8 wks, I called att rewards center. They said my rebate had been erroneously been marked "dupe" and that the problem would be corrected and I should be receiving my rebate in 4-6 wks. 6 weeks later when it didn't arrive I called again. The representative told me that the problem shouldn't exist and that she would fix it with an e-mail to her supervisor. I asked to speak to the supervisor. She assured me that the problem would be fixed and that I would receive my $80 rebate in 4-6 weeks. I told her I had heard this story before and asked if there was some sort of problem. She said everything seemed to be in order, but there had been some sort of re-organizational problem at 2wire headquarters. I finally, saw my rebate appear on their rewards center info site. But, it still didn't come. So I called again and talked to another supervisor. She said the problem would NOW be corrected and that I should be receiving my rebate in ... 4-6 wks and that she was powerless to do more than that... etc etc etc

Apparently, it's ok for AT&T take as much time as they like to honor their payments... however, every month I notice on my AT&T bill that if my payment is late... I am to pay late charges. Maybe they should be paying late charges on delinquent rebates.

By the way, I love my wireless internet..

sincerely JOnzo