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Tuesday, June 28th, 2016 12:06 AM

Stunned: Early termination fee for 8 year Uverse Customer

Thought I had seen it all, until today.   After 8 years of being a Uverse Internet, Cable and Family cell phone plan customer I experienced the unthinkable.   My Uverse service has gone downhill over the last several years.   Months ago, I called to cancel my $200/month service because the quality was so poor.  They convinced me to take a lower plan to cut my bill in half and to come try and fix my service.  After two half days of vacation babysitting techs  they replaced my modem, wiring, dvd and put in all wireless receivers.  The quality was ok for a month.  Then problems returned and actually got worse.   After several months of dvr not recording, lack of sound, pixelating picture and inability to connect to dvr from remote receivers, i gave up and cancelled my service.   And what do i get (even though i still have $160/month cell service?   ....they charge me a $120 early termination fee.   even though i am an 8 year customer?????  And they refuse to waive the early termination fee even though the only reason i cancelled service is because they cannot provide adequate service level.    I guess its time to cancel cell service and find someone who appreciates their customers.

1.9K Messages

9 years ago

I bet when they changed your plan they considered it a new contract and hence the early termination fee.  I too have lost vacation time, I hear ya, wish att would.

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2 Messages

9 years ago

Yeah, I guess so.   And its reasonable for them to do so, I guess.   But my point was that I only discontinued service because I couldn't get anywhere close to a reasonable signal at my house.  And even worse:   when i called to cancel service, the gentleman i spoke to said they probably wouldn't charge a early termination fee since I was an 8 year customer AND continue to use their cell service.  But low and behold, there's the fee on my bill AND when i call the Billing Dept  to dispute, they say they never waive early termination fees, ever.    The more I think about this, the more this sounds like a BBB isse.

1.9K Messages

9 years ago

@Frustra8d I don't think it is all that reasonable for them since you only discontinued because they could not provide the service.  I have had similar experiences and I am leaving.  The options I found were:  Roku for tv which is free...Ooma for phone which works like uvoice (voip) and only cost $5 - 6 a month and then dslextreme for internet and yes I know they use att techs and equipment but the cost is lower and there is no data cap and so far customer service has been great - something you could never say about att.  Don't know if any of that will help you but at worst my service will be the same I got with att and I am really slashing my bill and att will not be getting the major chunk of my money.  I have been with att for six years and it has been a nightmare from the first but I had no other options.  I wish you luck, you are going to need it!

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189 Messages

9 years ago

@Frustra8d

 

You and many others have found the worst issue with AT&T customer service reps.....

they seem to NEVER deliever or follow through on what they tell you they will do. 

They don't get the job done properly and satisfactorly most of the time. 

 

 

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2 Messages

9 years ago

We were are an AT&T family for over 10 years. For the past 4 we have had UVERSE service, we even moved and brought UVERSE with us. We had a very difficult begining with UVERSE (in both houses) so they gave us HUGE discounts. All that was fine (although the internet speed was extremely slow) until I went into the AT&T store thinking I would be proactive about the discounts rolling off and see what plan(s) they could offer me now for at least a two year pricing - I started the conversation in the middle of July, the discounts were rolling off at the end of August. I won't bore you with the entire long story but let's just say that we have chosen to NOT BE A UVERSE customer any longer and chose a different provider. Loyalty and proactive behavior means absolutley nothing to the folks at AT&T. I spoke with over 20 AT&T agents/representatives -  in retention and Accounts Payable and ISM and general agents/reps. I have documented each phone call, date and time and conversation and collected ID #'s (although I have heard from the representatives themselves that the ID#'s dont' mean a thing). We too still have our wireless service with AT&T because we use iPhones and as far as we know AT&T is the only provider that allows you to be on the phone while you are looking up things on the internet simulantenously. We have a good plan that we were grandfathered into because of how long we have been with AT&T. I received our bill (combined - which I never asked for or approved) and on it was a charge for an EARLY TERMINATION FEE - after speakign with over 20 representatives/agents you would have thought one of them might notice that we would have an early termination fee if we canceled ONE day before the discounts rolled off. NOT ONE MENTIONED ANYTHING REGARDING AN EARLY TERMINATION FEE - NOT ONE! When I phoned about it yesterday I was told repeatedly by a retention agent "I'm not able to waive the fee - it's valid" over and over and over again. Until I stopped her mid sentence and asked to speak with someone who had the authority to waive the fee - after being on hold for over 30 minutes, I hung up - I had to get to work! It looks like we will have to find another provider for our mobile servie - sad that AT&T does NOT care or value customer LOYALTY at all.

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8 years ago

I have a very similar experience and I did file a BBB complaint, have you heard back from them? Here is what happened to me :I've been an AT&T Uverse customer for a couple of years. My bill kept getting progressively worse and sometime last year, I called to cancel. The rep from retentions lured me by adding a phone (which I did not need) but that reduced my current service down to a reasonable amount so I went with it. She also promised me a 25.00 gift card which I never received but that's not my biggest complaint. My complaint is what happened about a month ago. A month ago I noticed that my bill increased from around 140 per month to 20 per month because somehow the package got changed from U200 to U450. I'm the only one on my account and my kids are small so not sure how that happened. In any event it got changed back. I then noticed it happened again, I call back (after a 45 minute wait) and ask who did this and they told me it was a male. Again, I'm the only one on my account. I ask for this to be changed back. This time I noticed some channels that I did have were missing. I call back and person had no idea how the channels were missing and never was able to help. I call back and wait again, had to go back to work, and was never helped. I call back and ask to cancel. The person I spoke promises says that they will add back my Smithsonian channel that I was missing. So its been over 2 weeks and I still do not have it. Being that I've had fraudulent changes to my account that I did not authorize, had to call several times costing me time and money, I am given no choice but to cancel, as I do not have hours and hours on end to fix this and do not want any other changes affecting my bill. I call today to cancel. First person tells me its impossible for someone else to make changes to my account and basically calls me a liar. Second person helps me by canceling but says I have to pay an early termination fee and transfers me. After being on the call for 1.5 hours, I do get my service canceled, but there is no one that could waive my termination fee of who knows how much. First of all, I never signed any contact and was never, never, never informed of any fee. This is not my fault that someone keeps making changes to my account. Shouldn't AT&T protect its consumers? Is there any training for customer service these days? I have never experienced such an unethical company in my lifeti

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2 Messages

8 years ago

Hello
Although our experience was different, we too canceled our service. We went from a total AT&T family - TV, home phone (2 lines) Internet, wireless to only wireless (and because of the continued rising costs looking around at our other options). We've been a loyal AT&T costumer for 10+ years. It means nothing! I'm sorry you have to deal with this. Try express the issue to one or more of the news fixer/helper shows. I did. And interesting enough I finally received a phone call from someone from the "Presidents" office from AT&T.

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