Seems like a pretty lucrative scam for AT&T.

Are you serious? Start complaining to the FCC? They admitted the problem and corrected it and gave him some extra money...

Thats like saying that if I was sold something from a store that wasn't in stock and then they refunded my money plus a bit more, I should still complain to the BBB and the states attorney.

I think both the OP and AT&T handled this in the right way. Both are happy. Take this as a warning, yes, test your speeds. File with the FCC? No. No need to do that!

Optimum did the same thing to me with the Boost. I actually suspected something but all of their CSR's insisted that I had Boost and my slow connections were caused by something else. Finally I was able to prove to one CSR that I didn't have Boost (different IP range) and they apologized because their billing system is separate from the system that actually provides the service. They then tried to turn it on, and it caused an outage in my area. Apparently, they were never able to offer it in the first place.

@JRules: I agree. I think the OP's point was to prevent people from being charged for something that they aren't getting. Like "I bought a 19" monitor and it was only 15" wide!!! RIP OFF!!!"

I'm not sure about calling the FCC. If its a one time error and you are the only one, I wouldn't bother. Are there maybe neighbors who have AT&T also and you could ask about internet?

@JRules: While it is good that they have refunded the difference and offered some compensation, what they did is illegal. He's well within rights to file a complaint, particularly since my own experiences with AT&T have led me to believe that they pull this stuff all the time. I had a similar issue with them just this past week involving my phone plan, and continuing to bill me for a service months after I canceled it.

I'm not saying AT&T is trying to rip people off, but they're certainly not trying very hard to avoid it.

@JRules:Your analogy is flawed. Here's a better one.

It's like going to the gas station and paying the price for premium gas, and pumping from the premium pump, and getting regular. That's against the law.

When a gas station in our county was accused of doing that, the county weights and measures department investigated. They determined the station owner was having the delivery trucks pump regular gas into the premium tank. Then they closed down the station and put the owner in jail.

We're not talking a mistake by a mom-and-pop store here. We're talking a huge corporation with immense resources, which knows it can't deliver what it has promised, and charges for it anyway. An FCC complaint is going easy on them.

@JRules: while i sort of agree with you I can't help but think about all the helpless smucks out there with no clue that they are getting the wrong service.

AT&T *is* charging for the wrong service that isn't even provided in his area. I wounder how common this sort of thing is.

I've had AT&T DSL since 'O1, myself, and have upgraded to higher tiers twice. When I signed up, I got about half the advertised speed until I called and asked about it. When I paid to upgrade to Pro, my speeds stayed the same until I called and asked. When I upgraded to Elite, the speeds stayed the same until I called and asked. It's a bit astonishing I'd had to do this every time, but I guess, if you don't complain, they don't have to fix it.

@bobert: Sometimes being a large company makes it harder to keep things straight, despite "immense resources."

I don't think an FCC complaint is necessary because AT&T ultimately did right by the OP. Then again, you probably agree that the Indiana woman should be jailed with meth addicts.

@Xerloq speaks Portuguese, too...:

I don't think an FCC complaint is necessary because AT&T ultimately did right by the OP.

@bobert:
You can't compare those, they are two very different things.
He got his money back, there's need to file a complaint.

How was DSL Pro not available in his area, when he was getting DSL Basic.
Wouldn't DSL Pro running on the same line as basic, so how come he can't get pro.

@JRules: A complaint to the FCC is certainly warranted (perhaps the FTC as well for charging him for something that he did not receive) with the provision that the OP explains that once the error was discovered (by the consumer) that ATT admitted to the mistake and refunded the money (after the consumer asked for a refund). The FCC may do nothing wioth the complaint, but at least they will be aware that this is a potential issue.

The OP should also state in his complaint that he does not need a response back from the FCC and he is terminating his service with ATT and is not requesting any further compensation from ATT.

@Colonel Jack O'Neill:
The OP probably was not close enough the to central office or remote terminal. I lived in a smaller town and ordered PRO DSL. I had to have AT&T tweak my "profile" to about 2.0 - 2.5 Mbps due how far I was from the Central office. If I was setup any higher I would lose sync and experience slow choppy crappy service. Also I was told I did not qualify for PRO DSL but I knew that I could get faster than 1.5Mbps. I had to go thru second tier people to get setup on the PRO service. DSLREPORTS dot com is a good site for info about most ISP's and some even have forums which are run by the ISP techs who know what they are doing.

I had a sour experience with the Death Star. I had 1.5 DSL with them for 5 years with no problems, but decided to try their Elite, 6 Mbps service since I was watching more online video (e.g. Hulu, Netflix).

Although I was getting the promised speed, the service would drop intermittently and I had to reset the DSL modem to get back on track. That was something I never had to do with the slower DSL. Anyway, after extensive inconclusive tests, they shipped me a new DSL modem, but the problem persisted.

I convinced myself that they couldn't consistently deliver Elite DSL to my house, so I bumped the speed down to their 3.0Mbps DSL. The connection didn't drop, but I really missed my higher speed connection.

I ended up switching to the other evil empire, Comcast. I got 15Mbps at $20 for 6 months, and then it goes up to $43. Elite DSL was $35, so I can live with that.

So far, so good with Comcast.

@markrubi: You are correct on what likely caused the problem. Ive worked as a DSL tech and this kind of stuff happens a lot unfortunately. The customer may be within range of the CO on paper, but may be on the border. The computer says "yup...close enough for service A,B, and C" the sales person isnt going to question the computer since they have no reason (and usually no understanding of the limitations) and sells it. Sometimes its ok, sometimes it sucks and the customer needs to call and get it looked at.

Ive had customers paying for 7mb connections only to be told 3mb was the fastest available in that area, the ISP refunds the difference with a bonus for the hassel and everyone is happy.

If a customer is getting bad service and doesnt complain, they are now also at fault. The company wont always know that you are having trouble, and in this case, his account was probabaly set to be pro and the modem just wasnt getting the speed it should have been.

@JRules:

If this guy had to sign a contract with an ETF, this is the way to go. What if 1MB isn't fast enough (sounds like it isn't) and AT&T wants to charge him $150 for the priviledge of going to cable?

@AJ_Syrinx:
I've has that issue too. 1.5Mbps via Verizon and was quite happy with it. Speakeasy offered 6.0Mbps at the same cost, and we switched over. All goes well unless I saturate the connection then things get flakey.

Then FiOS came along (finally!) and we now get 20Mbps for half the cost of Speakeasy - and it's been rock-solid.

He should definitely file with the FCC. AT&T has (increasingly) frequently been caught advertising things in areas that are just plain not available in those areas.

to address the comments above, if a pharmacy were to sell a drug as 25mg/dose when they really filled them with 10mg doses, or flat out using the wrong drug completely, I sure as hell would be complaining to someone who can light a fire in that pharmacists ass.
Granted, this mixup of services from AT&T would not have resulted in detrimental effects to anyones health, we, as a hyperculture, expect companies to be 100% accurate when giving information about services and billing (even though they don't care enough about the consumer to be accurate). We have come to rely on the internet and its constant flow of information, much the same way we now rely on pharmacies to give us drugs that improve our quality of life.

Clearly, AT&T is in the business of cashing in on false advertising, so long as a customer will put up with it. though they paid him a little extra, it was likely offereed more as a "please do not make a big stink about this" payment. the biggest repayment to me would be seeing AT&T stop the false advertising and borderline bait and switch tactics they currently employ.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: "If a customer is getting bad service and doesnt complain, they are now also at fault. "

And that's what's wrong with companies in America.

@Xerloq speaks Portuguese, too...: An FCC complaint is certainly warranted, even though they corrected the error in the end, because the FCC collects information on complaints received (she said hopefully). Not reporting it could be problematic, because if multiple people discover that this is happening to them, and they all fix it through AT&T, and none of them make a complaint, then other people who might not be aware that there's a problem could get shafted. If the FCC collects enough complaints, it will investigate.

I'm not saying that AT&T is doing it intentionally, but if their system is just mega-glitchy, they need to fix it, and the FCC is the best organization for collecting that information and acting on it.

JRules, the subby was not made whole for AT&T's wrongdoing. He should not have been refunded the difference between DSL Basic and DSL Pro, he should have been given all his money back. He paid for something, and didn't get it. He shouldn't have to be out any money at all. He should also be refunded the cost of the DSL modem, since he presumably wouldn't have bought it were he not told that he could get DSL Pro in his home.

@supercereal: And how will they find out that it's a pattern of deception if no one reports it? People are so afraid to get other people or companies "in trouble" - filing a complaint is not a bad thing!

@AJ_Syrinx: While technically the 6.0mbps service would work you must have been on the border of where that level of service would start to have problems. Once you start to use the connection heavily you will lose sync. Dropping down one tier in speed would have corrected the problem. Once you have a rock solid DSL connection you will never have any issues. Better bandwidth (because its not shared with your neighbors) and less drop outs then cable.

@JRules: Reading is fun! The OP's point is that yes, they handled the screwup correctly, but this could still be happening to other people, and he's trying to prevent that. Regardless of how nicely they treated him, I'm pretty sure selling a service that isn't available and charging you for that while giving you something else is against the law/FCC rules/whatever. If it happened to him, it can surely happen to someone else, and it needs to be fixed. Complaining to AT&T isn't going to fix that, he needs to go higher up.

@pmcpa4: Yes. Yes. He needs to do that. What AT&T is engaging in (and I think it's fair to assume it's a widespread issue in his area) is ILLEGAL. They are marketing and selling a product that DOES NOT EXIST, and they are charging for said product while delivering something else. He needs to report it to the FCC so that at the very least, they can make sure that it isn't happening to anyone else.

I had a similar experience - I ordered the highest service, and ended up with their basic service. They only billed me for the lowest service, but I was angry because I didn't get the $100 rebate as a result, and they wouldn't let me upgrade to get the rebate, as that was a promotion only for new customers.

I ended up switching to Comcast after I found out what AT&T did. (Ditched DirecTV while I was at it, as the signal was terrible.) I was disappointed, because I've been happy with AT&T wireless and the combined billing would have been nice. But unlike most of the posters here, I've actually had nothing but positive experiences with Comcast any of the times I've been a customer. So it all ended well.

@dartmouth05: That's taking it a step further, but yes, if AT&T offered him a service and could not provide it they should not be able to pocket the money. I said the same thing about Health Insurance policy recission.

@katstermonster: ok.... kinda see your point.... but I still give them some credit, they did correct the problem, no muss no fuss.

i'm one of those at&t techs that has to deliver hollow condescending apologies. the problem on our end is there's no mechanism for a guy like me to report bad sales practices through an internal system...and if there is, its buried underneath an incredible maze of subsystems. when sales screws sets unrealistic expectations, it makes provisioning and support look bad. we have enough issues on our side of the business without having to apologize for stupid, shortsighted rookie salespeople.

The only thing good about Comcast is their internet (not the price of it but the reliability of it) and it's common knowledge that cable internet is faster and more reliable than DSL internet, regardless of the company.

I had a similar problem with AT&T. I had pro (3.0) service for several years, then upgraded to elite (6.0). As soon as I was upgraded, my speed dropped to about 500k. After about a week, I had no connectivity at all. Apparently I was too far from the station for the 6.0 service, and bumping the speed up that high caused so much noise on the line that it blew up my modem. I had to buy a new modem. They did not reimburse me for the modem.

@pmcpa4: No, I agree entirely. They handled it properly in this case, they just need to take it a step further and stop this from continuing to happen to other people.

@CompyPaq: No, thats a natural process. At work, if you never recieve feed back, how do you assume you are doing? If you boss has never said "you did this wrong" and instead just docked your pay and then eventually fired you without ever telling you something, how would you react? you would be pissed, because you expect feedback. People and companies cannot get better unless someone tells them when they are doing good/bad and in the real world, the world of businesses, "no news is good news" is usually how it goes.

So AT&T screwed up, you got your money back....move on just don't ever go back to AT&T...but be honest...you will go back, you will give them another chance because they will come up with something faster or cheaper and you will take the bait...
I handle FCC/PUC/BBB/Regulatory complaints for a medium sized phone company...we apologize, we credit the customer back the the issue goes away don't waste your time unless you are out of pocket...

hay i sure could use a newer modem :)
got an anchent westell here that totaly barfs on multiple open ports

In Canada Bell does the exact same thing all the time. Unfortunately the CRTC (the Canadian equal to the FCC) is completely useless and in the pockets of Bell. You will buy a 7 Mb profile and they will put you on a 0.5 Mb profile and say it was an up to 7Mb offer. Even though they have a 0.5 Mb and 2Mb profile.

DSL as a broadband technology sucks...In my area, your speed is dependent on your distance from the "CO". If you are close, you can get the advertised 5Mbps. The further away from the magical "CO" your speed drops but the price does not. Cable is much better.

The biggest issue with dsl is latency; regardless of throughput, it takes longer for packets to make the round trip with DSL than cable. Try speedtest.net, and wait for the test button on the top of the map to appear. I get latencies of about 14ms with comcast and 22 with DSL, and I'm in a big city with lots of connectivity.

But getting back to the original topic, you should run the speedtest.net first thing when the technician connects your service, so you can get any issues handled while they are still there.

@katstermonster: I'm no expert but from what I understand of how DSL works, the quality of service you can get is dependent on your distance from the nearest hub and the quality of the lines to your house so there are lots of gray areas where you really don't know if you can get a certain level of service until the tech comes out to install the service and tells you that you can or can not get that level of service.

I've had a similar experence where the higher level of service wasn't available at the location where I ordered the service except in my instance, AT&T did call me back the a day or two after I ordered the service to notify me of the situation and asked if I wanted the lower service.

While I am not defending AT&T in any way, they are as ass-holey as these large corporations go, going from AT&T to Comcast is like going from minor demon to the mother of all hells that is comcast!

It is unfortunate that we are often limited to so few choices.

Business make "accidental" errors all the time. It's no problem if they get caught because all they have to do is offer a refund of the difference, which leaves them with nothing more (except a little interest earned on holding your money for a while) than they would have gotten had they not been having these "accidental" errors in the first place.

So it's worth the risk to do this to get as much money out of as many people as possible, because ... well ... there is no risk.

There needs to be a risk ... a big risk. Like maybe requiring the refund difference to include interest at the rate of the highest interest charged by any major credit card company, and then be tripled.

They would then be more likely to fail to admit such "errors", so an additional penalty needs to be applied for failure to promptly issue the above refund ... in the form of jail time ... for the supervisors, managers, and executives involved.

@supercereal: " If it's a proven record of deception, however, then the FCC or FTC should be alerted."

Explain to me please HOW you plan of finding this "record of deception" without the FCC and FTC being called in right now?

The whole point of the FCC and FTC is to investigate claims like this guys. While you might think its extreme, one of the MAIN jobs of these arms of the government is to make sure that telecommunications companies are playing on the up and up with consumers and FOLLOWING THE LAW.

Yes AT&T corrected it, but there is enough question now to warrant an investigation. Now whether they will do it or not is entirely up in the air.

@bobert: Just to state something, most of those huge corporation stores are really "mon and pop" ones as they are franchised. Not all places are, but a lot are.

@notovny: @xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: I bet that's what is going on with the guy in the article. He should have been able to get the Pro tier, but once his local wiring was tested it was a no-go.

I got the 1.5 DSL years ago and at the time didn't qualify for Pro. Several years later I re-tested my availability and it passed so I upgraded and my speeds shot up from 1.2 to about 2.3. So, at least in some areas their system works right.

This same thing happened to me when I moved. Except I didn't notice until about a year later. The ended up crediting me all the extra I paid, plus a little extra. It makes me think about all the people this is happening to who don't know.

Right now I'm having other issues with AT&T. Turns out they opened a new account when I moved again for me, but kept charging me at my old one and never told me about the new one, So for the past few months I've been paying on the wrong account, AT&T Disconnected my internet (but it magically started working again a day later), and I'm getting collection calls on the account i never knew about. I've tried talking to them several times, but only ever get "Sorry there is nothing I can do".

So, They are still trying to get me to pay on that "new" account, My old account is now offically closed out, and I am for some reason getting internet despite the fact it is supposidly disconnected. I think It's time for an EECB.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: EXACTLY. I'm in a Six Sigma class at school. Companies can't please their customer or fix anything if they don't know what's wrong. Should companies try to find that out? Yeah, but I doubt most people complain if a company were to try and survey them and find out how their service is or if they are happy with their product.

@dabub: Here's the thing. When the OP contacted them about it, the techs quickly figured out that the 3 Mbps wasn't available to him. As in, this isn't a line issue, this is a service availability issue. They were able to figure out that he should not have even been offered 3 Mbps. They should not be marketing a product in an areat that they KNOW cannot receive it. That's fraud.