Richard’s tale of his struggles with AT&T are valuable for two reasons — One, he shows how to win a customer service dispute in a calm, deliberate way, and secondly he points out a little-known option that lets customers who won’t be using their phones for a while place their phone on a cheap suspension plan rather than pay full price for the months in question.

The floor is yours, Richard the wise:

I recently went away on vacation for two months, which meant that when it came to my wireless service I had two choices:

1. Pay the absurd roaming rates
2. Not use my phone and pay the monthly bill

Obviously dissatisfied with both choices, I called up AT&T to see what they could do regarding my iPhone plan. I was told the following things:

Richard

1. I could set myself up for a Reduced Rate Suspend, which is a voluntary phone suspension plan at $10/month and no other charges would apply.
2. Since I was a week into my current billing cycle, I’d have to pay a prorated rate for that one week of cellular usage.

So I thought “Sure, it’s better than paying the $80 for my iPhone!” Guess how I felt this morning when I received an email from AT&T asking me to pay my bill online, and then finding out that I owed $77.38?

I haven’t called AT&T customer support yet, but I’ve gone ahead and emailed them as well as emailed MaryMichelle Timbang who is, last I checked, the contact for Executive Customer Service. I’m hoping this will clear up, because I’m both tired of the deception here as well as paying such a high amount for my phone bill every month and receiving this
kind of service.

At that point, Richard was perturbed that AT&T hasn’t made the situation right, but lo and behold, patience paid off and AT&T has now corrected the issue, and even admitted its own mistake:

I received a response from AT&T letting me know that they had incorrectly applied a “normal” suspension code onto my account rather than the Reduced Rate Suspension that should have been implemented. As of this writing, my account has been quickly fixed to reflect a $10 bill.

(Photo: The Ninja Monkey)

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