Business's DSL Still Out 1 Month After Account Breach

Derek tells Consumerist that someone contacted AT&T and canceled his business’s DSL account. Which is interesting, because that person had no affiliation with Derek’s business, didn’t have any of the account information, and really shouldn’t have been allowed to edit the account at all. Did that stop AT&T from letting the person end the business’s Internet access, resulting in early termination fees? Guess.

Even executive customer service couldn’t help, and Internet access is still out, so Derek turned to Consumerist to share his tale.

On 9/9, AT&T allowed an unauthorized individual to cancel our business class DSL account.

This individual is not affiliated with us, and did not have the account information, passwords, and secret questions.

Once we realized the account was dead, we called AT&T to try and rectify the situation.

During the first week, I called tech support and explained that we didn’t actually cancel the account. Each day I was assured a team leader or member of management would call me back, but each time we did not receive a call.

After a week of that, we tried posting on their forums and PM’ing moderators. A moderator responded in a helpful tone, took our account information, and assured us we’d be contacted in the next 48 hours.

[SPOILER ALERT]

No one called us back.

I continued to update the post I had made on the AT&T forums each day with the status of our account.

After a few consecutive days of updating the thread, I was contacted by E. from the office of the president. I must confess I was terribly excited he called as he seemed to have the authority to straighten it all out.

He put me in touch with one his case managers, R. R was very helpful when we first spoke and promised to follow up with the corrected account information. And then we never heard from her again. Seriously, somebody may want to go check on her.

After a couple more days of no progress, I called E. back at the office of the president. He seemed surprised his colleague had let us down, so he assigned the case to another case manager, B.

B was extremely apologetic when we first spoke before turning us over to T.

Just for reference, we’re in week 3 of no service at this point. B. and T. assured me they had everything straightened out, we probably just needed to enter our account info and reset the router.

I dispatched a sub-contractor to the site and…no internet service.

I called B. and T. back and explained there still seemed to be an issue. They assured me it would be taken care of.

Last Friday, everything finally got straightened out as far as the internet service goes. We were still waiting on an explanation of the breach and needed the billing corrected, but hey, we were pumped to be back in business!

Monday morning of this week, week 4.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Account deactivated again, no service. I dispatched a sub to the site again to confirm it wasn’t just a locked up router. No service.

I tried to call E. and B. and T. from the office of the president back. I left E. and B. voicemails on Monday and Tuesday but haven’t heard back.

Today is 10/4. The account went down 9/9. I have no service, no explanation for the breach, but do have a stack of bills for AT&T for our “early termination” fees.

Help me Consumerist, you’re my only hope!

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