We have stopped using our land line, except to answer annoying scammers and telemarketers, so I called Frontier Telephone to discontinue service. After trying to figure out a way to lower my bill to keep us as a customer, they put me over to the Retention Department, whose job is to talk you into keeping service. 911 will not be able to find you from a cell phone call. Do you have a security system? "No, we do not have crime here." Etc. Etc. I finally said, "Just turn off our service. Now." He refused to do so, and kept reading odd his script until I was yelling at him to disconnect us. My wife had not heard me tell at anyone in a very long time. So we went to our credit union where the auto deduct to pay for this takes place. A very nice customer service rep named Eddie called them up and perhaps knowing that the source of the finding was on the other end, we finally got then to discontinue service and billing.
There is no excuse for this
When I moved to Texas I found an apartment rather quickly. But when I contracted an electricity provider I was then told I could not get the power turned on until three days after my furniture arrived. The complex leasing officer then found me another provider that would have the power on when the moving van arrived. So I called the first provider to cancel the service: The person I contacted just hung up on me when I requested cancellation. Three days after my furniture arrived the first provider bumped the second telling them I had changed my mind. The second provider then hit me for a few hundred dollars for ending the contract early.
ReplyDeleteI simply paid the fine and never said anymore. I keep it all in the back of my mind as I look for a house in another city, wondering how difficult it will be to finally turn this electric provider off.
Doesn't the public utilities commission handle this sort of problem?
ReplyDeleteThe best excuses I have heard are:
ReplyDeleteInternet; "I am a registered sex offender, I cannot have the Internet anymore."
Credit card: "I'm turning myself in for my prison sentence next week, I won't need a credit card for 18 to 36 months."
I bought an early model cellphone about 10 years ago, and sent PNW Bell a letter with my final payment saying that I no longer required their services ... please send me a final bill for any usage up to that date. I hadn't been using the landline, so it was a small residual charge for services "to date", which I paid. I had bought my landline phones (desktop and a wall phone in the kitchen) years earlier, so there was no charge for hardware.
ReplyDeleteI already had switched to Verizon with my new cell phone, and I owned my landline instruments so there was no controversy. I simply paid the final bill which they sent me. (Ma Bell had been charging me over $100 a month for my landline phone!)
Apparently, Ma Bell has become more assertive in recent years. I assume they are running scared. I've been very happy with my new phone service, which costs a HELLUVA lot less and gives me better options.
Another example of the folly of allowing automated account deductions. When a service provider can feed itself from your bank account automatically you lose all control. Setting up automated monthly electronic payments from your account is a much better method because it keeps you in control.
ReplyDeleteIn some instances it may be justified - only way to make monthly instead of annual payments, auto-deduct gets a discount etc. For these, create a totally separate, completely independent "junk" account for which overdraft protection is completely turned off, which is fed only by transfers (automated or manual) from a different account and which is used for no other purpose Bonus points if your primary checling account is with Bank 1 and the "junk" account is at Bank 2 (maintaining a low minimum balance in the junk account is also necessary, and is should be a "no minimum balance, no fee" account).
Service provider gives you grief about terminating service, stop transferring money into the "junk" account so there's nothing there for them to withdraw.
Unknown: FCC and Frontier Telephone will be getting upset letters soon.
ReplyDeleteJerry: Frontier is an independent phone company whose stock price has been falling ever since I bought a few thousand shares. I think I see why.
Noname: Great idea, but then you get black marks on your credit rating. I like having a credit rating so good that when we went into the Cadillac dealer some years ago, the credit manager told the salesgal that we could have anything we wanted: our credit score was in the top half of the 99th percentile.