It pays to check over your monthly bills. I know this and tell other people to do it all the time.
You never know when you might find an error, computers make mistakes.....you know the drill. In theory, smart consumers know to check their monthly bills for mistakes.
In practice, it doesn't always happen. And I admit, I had gotten kind of lax about it.
So when I happened to check over our cellphone bill the other day, I was at first mystified - then horrified - to discover we were being charged $10 per month for a data plan on one of our phones.
I was mystified because not only did we not sign up for it, we had, in fact, blocked the phone from getting picture texts and having Internet connection.
I was horrified because we had been billed for this service for 11 months before I noticed it.
Aggravated equal parts with myself and AT&T, I went to my closest AT&T store, figuring it would be best to straighten out the whole situation in person.
Wrong. The very courteous salesman told me he would be happy to take the service off our plan and make it retroactive to the beginning of the month.
When I told him I was more interested in a retroactive credit for the entire 11 months, he politely told me he couldn't help me and handed me a phone number.
Thirty minutes wasted, but undeterred, I went home to make the call to a customer service rep who initially offered me the very same thing as the store clerk.
When I repeated my story, she offered me a $25 credit. I politely told her that wasn't good enough and launched into my story a third time. I figured it that didn't work, I'd ask for a supervisor.
I didn't have to. The phone rep suddenly offered me a full $110 credit, which I accepted. Within a few minutes, I had my credit and an email confirming it.
I hung up happy and $110 richer.
Afterward, I wondered how many folks would chalk up the mistake to their own neglect and let it go? How many would have caved to the offer of the $25 credit?
How often do you check your monthly bills? Have you ever found a big mistake?
In your experience, what types of companies are the biggest offenders?
Please share your customer service war stores, big or small.
