AT&T Improperly Charges 12000 State Residents
AT&T improperly charges 12,000 state residents
By JASON GERTZEN jgertzen@journalsentinel.com, Journal Sentinel
Thursday, May 13, 2004
More than 12,000 Wisconsin telephone customers had about $5 in erroneous fees added to each of their monthly bills by AT&T earlier this year, prompting state officials to investigate.
AT&T said it improperly added $3.95 in charges plus additional fees and taxes on the phone bills of more than 1 million telephone customers in the United States for the January billing period. The main fee is for customers who don’t sign up for certain calling packages.
Most of those affected — about 800,000 — weren’t AT&T customers. An additional 200,000 to 300,000 had AT&T service.
“You can’t charge for service you don’t provide,” said Jim Rabbitt, director of the Wisconsin Bureau of Consumer Protection.
State officials received about three dozen written complaints and identified 12,371 Wisconsin consumers who were charged, Rabbitt said.
The Wisconsin attorney general’s office is reviewing the case, spokesman Brian Rieselman said.
State officials haven’t decided whether to pursue a lawsuit similar to the one Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch filed last week or another filed April 30 in Florida, he said.
Some consumers said they were given a hard sell to buy AT&T services when they called the company to challenge the charges. Others said company representatives were unresponsive.
“There has been a trend toward small amounts of damage to large numbers of customers,” Rabbitt said. “If you can misbill one million consumers $1 a month, that is a significant amount of money.”
AT&T blames the problem on a computer glitch and said it issued refunds or credits.
“We have apologized, and we are sending letters of apology to the affected customers,” said Mike Pruyn, an AT&T spokesman in Chicago. “It is an unfortunate billing error.”
The charges have prompted lawsuits, but the company says the plaintiffs don’t have a case. The billing errors were not part of a ploy to switch long-distance customers to AT&T improperly, Pruyn said.
“We are denying all allegations that we purposely mis-billed customers to induce them to call in,” Pruyn said.
AT&T has had a team working to fix the computer system and scrub accounts to make sure all affected consumers have been compensated, Pruyn said.
“We are hopeful we have gotten them all,” Pruyn said.
CONTACT AT&T
AT&T said consumers charged erroneous fees have been identified and will receive refunds or credits. Anyone with questions or concerns about being billed in error can contact AT&T by:
Calling (800) 222-0300 or writing AT&T, P.O. Box 944080, Maitland, FL 32794-4080. Or visit the AT&T Web site at www.att.com/ contact. Leave a message that includes the phone number on the bills.