The issue has escalated over the past two months as the victim has complained to the police. He also is refusing to pay a $900 bill from AT&T until the charges added to his account by the associate are removed. But since he hasn’t paid his bill, AT&T has suspended his account.
AT&T failed to believe a customer who said that he did not add two new lines and order over $2K in equipment
An email that the victim just received from the carrier says that he has one month to pay his bill or else he will be responsible for over $3,000 in equipment charges. And without cellular service, he can only use his phone over Wi-Fi for data and cannot make or take calls on the unit. Interestingly, the official AT&T Reddit account joined the thread to say, “Hi there, we are here to help. Please send us a private message with your fraud reference number, your name and the best contact number to reach you.”
An AT&T customer claims that an associate added two lines and financed over $2,000 in equipment using his account without consent
The customer responded by writing, “You are not here to help me. If you were this would have been cleared up 2 months ago. I wouldn’t have the police involved and my line wouldn’t be suspended and then canceled in 21 days. So yeah, you guys are really here to help!” That last bit was sarcasm in case you couldn’t tell.
Another Redditor said that refusing to pay the bill is not the best way to dispute charges since it leads to the suspension and then the closing of your account along with the loss of your phone number. Meanwhile, it seems that the associate accused by the customer of committing the bad deeds has vanished and even the police can’t find him. To make matters worse, AT&T won’t give the cops any information they have on their missing employee.
AT&T has a support page you can visit if you have a dispute with the carrier
The victim writes, “It’s awful! I don’t even care what they do to the employee, I just want the charges off my account! The employee stopped showing up for work once he realized people were on to him. Police are still looking for him. AT&T won’t give any of his info to the police. The police have to subpoena AT&T HR (Human Resources) to get his info.”
We wonder whether AT&T has had a change of heart now that the associate allegedly involved in this whole sordid affair has simply disappeared. The scary part about this story isn’t just that AT&T won’t believe its own customer, but that there doesn’t seem to be anything that the customer could have done differently to prevent it from happening. And that makes all of us vulnerable to having something like this happen to you or me no matter which wireless firm we use.