Phone Bill Disputes

AT&T Mobile Investment

AT&T announced that it will invest $19 billion to build out its mobile network in 2010 to keep up with growing demand for its Iphone and other 3g devices and phones.

Specifically, AT&T will add 2,000 new cell sites and upgrade existing cell sites with three times more fiber links than it had in 2009. This will increase capacity for the network that connects the cell towers to AT&T’s main network. The backbone portion of the network is a critical component to AT&T’s network; with these upgrades in place – it will help AT&T to easily upgrade in the future to 4G wireless technology.

Text Messages Fee

Text messaging is allowing cell phone carriers to mark up their bills by 6,500%.

Consumer are gradually learning that sending these small and short messages are causing their cell phone bill to dramatically increased. Here is why?

On a typical pay per text plan, it usually cost you $0.20 to send outgoing and $0.10 to receiving a 160 character text.

Even if you sign up for a unlimited texting plan for $10 a month, they are still profiting because texting causes them next to nothing to maintain.

AT&T IPhone Complaint App

AT&T announced that it has release an new application called “Mark The Spot” which will let iPhone user submit complaints about dropped calls, poor service coverage, and less-than-perfect voice quality.

The application is free and available in iTunes.  The “Mark the Spot” application can be downloaded onto all iPhones running version 3.0 or later of Apple’s operating system or it can be access using iTunes and synchronized to the iPhone via a PC or Mac.

AT&T said that they plan to use the data collected to identify trends and prioritize the company’s network investment.

iPhone owners have been complaining about AT&T’s network since the Apple iPhone went on sale in the summer of 2007. Complaints mounted after the 3G version of the phone was released a year later in 2008.

And as more iPhone users come onto the network, more people, particularly in densely populated urban areas, such as New York City and San Francisco, have experienced problems with dropped calls and congested data networks.

AT&T has been upgrading its network to keep up with demand. But problems persist. And AT&T’s network recently got a poor ranking in terms of customer satisfaction in a Consumer Reports survey.

Wireless Carrier Survey

Verizon Wireless was the big winner of the annual wireless consumer survey.  The big loser was AT&T.  AT&T got hammered in just about every category, from voice services to the frequency of dropped calls.  That is not a good thing for exclusive iPhone carrier.

The survey covered 26 cities.  The results are as follows:

1. Verizon
2. T-Mobile
3. Sprint
4. AT&T

AT&T’s worst marks in the Consumer Reports came in such categories as “service availability,” “circuit capacity,” “dropped-call frequency,” and “voice service.”

Federal Trade Commission

Telephone companies are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FCC).  So if you have a telephone bill or a cell phone bill that you can’t get resolved with your carrier, consider filing a complaint with the FCC.

It may not seem like a big deal but filing a complaint with the FCC can have a huge impact.  It onlys the FCC to spot company wide problems and help you resolve your issue.  Telephone companies hate seeing unresolved complaints filed with the FCC.  The FCC will contact them and make them explain what happened and why the matter was not resolved.

As more and more people join in this practice, the power in numbers takes over.  Believe it or not the system can work for you.

Collect Calls

Collect calls from a pay phone could cost you a fortune.  In today’s time, it hard to imagine anyone without a cell phone.  However, there could be a time when your cell phone battery runs out and you need to make an emergency collect call.

One day, a Northridge lady was running late at her hair salon.  Her cellphone had died.  So she made a collect call to her home, from a pay phone, about 3 miles from home.  She had no choice because the pay phone ate up her quarters.  So she dialed zero and the operator came on to assist her make her collect call.

When her husband received the call, he immediately accepted the collect call request knowing it was his wife.  The call lasted roughly three minutes.  Then when the AT&T bill arrived, it included a charge for $45.09 from something called NCIC.  NCIC is the Network Communication International Corp., a Texas company that says its the largest private held provide of collect call services for pay phones, prisons, hospitals and hotels.

According to the phone bill, NCIC charged her $37.40 for the brief, in-the-neighborhood collect call, $4.74 in regulatory fees and taxes, and an extra $2.95 just for the hell of it (the bill calls this NCIC’s “billing cost recovery fee”).

The couple were appalled when they saw the $45 charge.  But is it legal?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

“Pay phones are largely unregulated,” said Rosemary Kimball, a spokeswoman for the Federal Communications Commission. “They were deregulated in 1996.”

An NCIC customer-service supervisor said the call consisted of a nearly $25 “connection charge” and a rate of about $2.50 per minute.

NCIC provides collect-call services on behalf of whoever owns a particular pay phone and typically kicks back more than half the proceeds to the owner. It’s thus in both NCIC’s and the phone owner’s interest for the charge to be as high as possible.

In this case, our victim called NCIC and when she complained about being charged $45 for a local call, the service representative immediately dropped about $20 from the total.

AT&T FCC Fine

The Federal Communications Commission said that AT&T will pay $500,000 to settle charges that it erroneously billed customers and non-customers a $3.95 monthly recurring fee in 2004.

After agreeing to pay the fine, AT&T announced that it was taking steps to address the billing problems.

It is clear now more than ever that we have to review our telephone and call phone bills very careful.  We have to scrutinize every detail and service that we are being charged for to make sure they are correct.

Class Action Charges AT&T

A California company filed a lawsuit charging that it and other telephone customer were unlawfully billed by AT&T through long-distance charges added to their local phone bills.

People who are not AT&T customer are discovering that they are being repeatedly assessed AT&T long-distance charges through their local phone by BellSouth, the company charged.

The problem was not confined to California.  The Florida Attorney General issued a consumer advisory warning telephone customers that AT&T long distance charges were improperly being added to local phone bills.

According to one person, who tried to closed their account with AT&T, AT&T continued to billed on their closed account anyways.  They tried to clear this up for 8 months but AT&T continued to billed them.

Part of the problem is with AT&T’s automated system that prevents callers from speaking with a live customer service representative and obstructing consumers from receiving refunds for the improper long distance charges.

The class action lawsuit was filed on August 15, 2003 and asserts claims against AT&T for unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business practices in violation of the California Unfair Competition Law, for unjust enrichment, and for money had and received.

According to the complaint, AT&T unlawfully bills some consumers who are not AT&T customers through their local phone bills, and AT&T’s computerized billing system continues to assess charges on phone lines not subscribed to AT&T long-distance service even though AT&T’s own records indicate that there is no AT&T call activity on the phone lines or that AT&T does not provide service to such lines.

Text Messaging Charges Surprise

Cell phone customer are frequently shocked when their first bill arrives and it is hundreds of dollars more than expected.  It is usually the parents who are have their kids on their plans that are the most surprised.

The standard cell phone plan has a few hundred “anytime minutes” and free night and weekend minutes for $30 to $50.  These plans do not usually include text messaging or internet access.  Chances are they don’t push you to buy these additional luxuries because you get them anyways.

For example, if you didn’t add the text message option to your plan, you will still be charge for each text message that you sent and received – even if you didn’t read the message.  That also includes text messages from your carrier.  You usually get charged for that as well.

Or what about when your son browses the Internet and download a ringtone to their cell phone.  You get charge for that as well.

And its all in the fine print of those nice agreements that they ask you to sign while you are too busy checking out your new phone.  So if you don’t want to get these nice surprise make sure you call the cell phone company and tell them to turn off all text messaging and Internet access on your Cell phones.  This will help you avoid getting some nasty unexpected phone bills.