Today, much to my surprise, AT&T wireless cut off my phone service without warning. Seriously. According to them, I have past due accounts of over 30, 60, and 90 days. My last bill (due Jan 6th) says differently. Total current charges (and total amount due): $87.07, which is one month's payment. I have been trying to work it out since this afternoon. Here's what's happened:

I just spent close to 3 hours on the phone with various AT&T wireless agents, trying to straighten out a problem that AT&T could have prevented with a simple phone call or text message.

My October 2010 payment was running late, so I decided to pay online by credit card. That same month, I had a suspicious charge show up on the credit account, and filed a dispute against it. Somehow, the AT&T payment ($175) got tangled with the suspscious overseas payment ($70), and was also noted as disputed. AT&T was notified in late October that the payment was being disputed. They did not contact me. I admit that, if the credit card company noted the two disputes in the correspondance I received, I completely missed it. My wireless bills never indicated a problem, however. They came every month - November, December, January - with a regular monthly amount and were paid. My last bill, due January 6th, was for $87.07 (which is normal, when you add all the various manure charges on top of the $50 service, plus $20 for a second line). I mailed a payment on the 15th for twice the amount ($175), knowing that the new billing would be due soon. Today, I went to make a call, and my phone service was "disrupted" due to an past due balance. WHAT???

I called AT&T and spoke with Jane, who quickly gave up and transferred me to Doug. I was polite, and I never raised my voice (I've worked customer service... it's not their fault). After ages on the phone with Doug, I was finally told that my October payment had been "blacked out" and I had past due payments of more than 90 days on my account. Doug suggested I call my bank and find out what the problem was. So I did. My bank CSR did a little investigating, and told me that AT&T was told of the dispute problem back in October. They never contacted me. Not in October. Not in November or December. And certainly not this week, before they decided to cut off my service. None of my most recent statements show an overdue balance, and certainly not one past due for 60 or 90 days or more.

I called AT&T back and told them they had buggered up, but I would make another payment over the phone, in order to have the phones turned back on. They claim that the $175 payment of the 15th has not arrived yet, so I had no option. I had to make a payment before I could have the phone service restored. Trouble is, the automated payment system will not accept payment!! Neither the automated system or the online payment system will allow me to make a payment. The customer service people (and "supervisors) say they can not enter a payment manually, either. Raul deGuzman told me I would just have to wait until the payment was received and cleared before I could do anything. When I asked for a supervisor, Enrico Beladona told me I would have to talk to customer service and ask them to send an email to the finance office asking finance to remove the hold so I could post a payment. He said it might take a while, since he didn't know when they would respond to the email. I said, 'Excuse me? Can you not call them?? AT&T is a telephone company!!" He said they could not because they didn't have any extension numbers for those offices. I would just have to wait while he connected me to customer service. He did, and I explained it all over again to Nakala (who was very polite and apologetic). When finance refused her request to release the block so I could make a payment, she said she was sending an email to request a "higher order" to have the problem investigated, the block removed, and my phone service restored. According to her, they are supposed to call me back "immediately" to work on the problem.

I am still waiting.

I realize that I am partially to blame because I did not realize that the October payment had gotten tangled with the dispute way back then. On the other hand, AT&T has been billing me normally for four (4) months since the dispute and never mentioned that there was a problem to begin with. They knew about it. My bank told them in October that there was a dispute. Why couldn't they call me, or text, or send a notice in my monthly statement, or any one of a number of ways they have to contact me???? I have been with AT&T since the early/mid 90s. I stayed with them during all of the ATT-Cingular-ATT-again confusion and through multiple moves and plan changes. My bills have always been paid. So this is what you get for beng a loyal customer?? Gee, thanks a lot, AT&T!

ATT Wireless Service is absolutely horrible, and I am going to go out of my way to complain. I've placed an order via ATT Premier site after having been told 12 different things by 12 different ATT representatives. I finally place the order. ATT processes the order incorrectly. They activate one of the phones I ordered 3 days before I received the phone! I call in and spend 2 hours talking to 4 different people to resolve the issue. I get disconnected and they don't call back. I'm now back in the customer care cue. Absolutely horrible. I'll file a complaint; Consumers should do business with other carriers - not with ATT!

I have an AT&T cell phone which is currently with a family member who is traveling in Mexico.Once they left the country, their caller ID stopped working though the Viva Mexico plan claims to offer caller ID.When they call out their number always shows as "unknown caller" and anyone who calls in, no matter where they are calling from, shows up as the number of my family member's own phone!They have also had a hard time accessing voicemail, and when I emailed AT&T for the gazillionth time, they had the nerve to disable voicemail...I have no idea how they did this---and told me that I'd never set it up in the first place, which is an outright lie!!!

They keep advertising DSL, and have actually sent out two routers for my installation, only to find out they do not work. I tried calling in for support, and kept getting the runaround between departments & operators, whom all assure me that they are really really sorry for the problems, but eventually get me to a recorded voice that tells me that the department is closed. I finally get someone, an actual person that explains I have been calling all of the wrong numbers, and got me to a person who could talk with the field engineer, put me on hold for a long, long time, and ends up telling me that the engineer said that the signal is too weak. From where? To Where? Is it being fixed? Will it be fixed? No answers, but they assure me once again that they are really really sorry for my problems. Then disconnect me. I try to return the routers, and it took 3 months + to get them off my bill, with over 1 hour each time I called to explain the situation. What a crock of poor service. After 6 months of grief, still not any indication if internet is even available or if they are going to. I cannot seem to get a person in the company, only a machine asking stupid questions.

I work for att and i am so annoyed with these att cust who call up yelling at me and calling me names. I am the only att rep who actually tells the cust the truth yet i get all the bs calls. AND im sick of these cust who call and get mad when they have to repeat their phone number well i am sorry that i didnt get it when you were speaking a 100 words amin so shut the hell up and repaet 10 numbers.