The Fraud Department at AT&T Wireless is Asleep at the Switch

This will be my first blog post of the year. That is unfortunate in and of itself. Somehow last year simply got away from me at the end and my pace of writing dropped to zero. What is even more unfortunate is that this post is going to deal with my abysmal experience with AT&T Wireless and their quizzical notions of customer service.

Back in October of 2010, towards the very tail-end of my billing cycle, I received my normal monthly wireless bill only to discover that it had mysteriously grown to $500+ dollars from the normal $70-$80. Naturally, this was disturbing so I called AT&T to see what was going on. The customer service representative transferred me to the Fraud Department right away and we went through the process. She began to ask me if I knew where certain Apple stores were, etc. It turns out that someone added a handful of iPhone 4's to my account, each from a different store.

Apparently, this is called "gaming" and is typified by someone purchasing a pile of smart phones on contract, getting the wireless carrier's subsidy of a few hundred dollars and then selling them out on the open market for a hefty profit. 

In any event, AT&T acknowledged that this was indeed fraud and that they would have the charges off my bill in a week. I paid the typical amount just to make good on my part of the deal and we were through.

About 2 days later I received an email from AT&T along the lines of "Call us immediately!" That's usually code for "You are a deadbeat, you haven't paid your bill." So, I called up AT&T and reminded them of the fraud issue and sure enough they promised that they wouldn't shut off my phone for non-pay.

The next day my phone was shutoff. Now what is interesting about AT&T (and I don't know if this is common with other vendors) is that they disable all ability to call folks, including the famous 611. Translation: You can't call AT&T to get any assistance what so ever! I hope you all have a second phone to use if this ever happens to you.

In any case, I called AT&T and spent almost an hour on the phone with them convincing them again that my situation was legitimate. At this point it didn't appear that Fraud had noted my account or started the process on anything else in terms of credit. Again, I was promised that everything was proceeding as it should and they re-activated my account.

I was irritated that things had gone this far but mollified that at least it sounded like everything was underway. I never received a call back from anyway as I awaited my next invoice. It arrived a few weeks later and lo and behold, my balance was now almost $900. They had not cleared any of the charges and in fact, the regular monthly fees on those accounts were now accruing as well.

Again, I went into the AT&T threshing machine. I was promised a call back within 72 hours. They called this a commitment. Some commitment! Why couldn't they just resolve the issue when I called them in the first, second or third place!?! Nonetheless after an hour plus call, I awaited justice. It didn't come.

On the next day I awoke to another "Contact us immediately!" email. They still thought I was a deadbeat. Call. Explain. Reassurances.

The following day my phone was once again shut off. This time it is on the day of our company holiday party. Sometimes, you just have to really appreciate cosmic timing.

Another call. This time, I wasn't dropping off the line until these charges and lines were gone for good. I kept it together and explained fully to the individual on the phone what had happened in the past and what was going to happen before I hung up the phone. She was understanding and very easy to understand, unlike most of the other folks I had spoken to up until this point. She got her supervisor on the line with her, we worked through the approvals and she got my account credited. 

"Finally," I thought, "I am done with this nightmare!" 

Fast forward to today. I receive my first invoice of the new year. All of the charges are indeed gone. But now NEW charges are there. AT&T charged me early termination fees on each of the phones that were removed from my account. I now owed more than $300 on phones that I never bought, don't own and have been desperately trying to remove from my account.

At this point, this is a bad dark comedy of errors. It was bad enough to have my account compromised, but to be treated like this is evidence of a system that is rotten to the core. I certainly do hope the iPhone goes to Verizon soon (and rumors are that it is within a month). Whatever early termination fees I might have to pay will be a bargain compared to this.