Intentional Fraud and "Bait & Switch" by AT&T Internet Services

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AT&T is engaging in some "Gotcha Capitalism" and since they are lying to me, it has become a point of honor to pursue the matter. 

In these matters, if everyone just accepts their activities, then they will persist and expand their activities accordingly. Since I am well versed in Internet technology and procurement of Internet service, it falls to me to pursue this, since most people would never recognize until later, if at all, that they had been lied to. And since the amounts are relatively insignificant, there would not be a lot of will for customers to pursue the matter. If the customer is are non-technical, how could they even argue their case with AT&T, much less concisely express what transpired in such a way that would motivate AT&T to redress or compel an attorney to champion the issue? 

The good news is that most of the time devoted to writing this letter, I was stuck on hold with their company, and so otherwise incapable of performing other tasks, besides taking detailed notes about the call. 

I have drafted a "transcript" of the calls with their company to resolve the matter. I have summarized the long format, attached, here in this letter. 

At the minimum, I am lodging a complaint with the FCC and with the Ga PSC. I also think it may fall into the purview of the FTC, FBI, State Attorney General's office, and perhaps even the State House Technology Committee (sic). 

What do you recommend?




Dear FCC, FBI IC3, Georgia PSC, FTC, and Georgia House of Representatives Science &Technology Committee,


I would like to bring to your attention an instance of Intentional Fraud and "Bait & Switch" by AT&T.

The call centers are located in multiple states, so this issue will fall under the purview of Federal authorities, in addition to the State of Georgia.

They refused to reverse the transaction, or to make good on the terms they offered, and have forced me to accept something different from what I originally purchased.

I have a claim for Bait and Switch, since what I purchased is not what I was told I was buying.

I was not allowed to return the product to restore myself before they misrepresented the purchase. 

This amounts to intentional fraud and misrepresentation.

Claim Summary : 
I was sold an upgrade to my existing aDSL line from 1.5mbs to 6.0mbs for an additional $10 per month on my statement.The account had not been modified since  since 2005 or 2006.
AT&T changed the amount such that the actual increase was $25 per month higher.

There had been an ongoing $15 credit applied monthly to my Internet billing. This had been offered as an incentive to win my business from Earthlink. This discount did not have an expiration.

After receipt of the next monthly bill,  I discovered the $15 monthly credit was removed from the account during the upgrade.

Then, AT&T used intimidation and threatened to bill me retroactively for the $15 monthly credit  since they argued there should never have been an ongoing discount with no expiry.


I offered two forms of resolution. They could either restore my account to it's status prior to the change, or they could honor the bargain I was told during the sale, that the discount would continue as it had done. They refused both alternatives.

Ultimately, AT&T did replace a $15 monthly credit to the account, but this $15 monthly credit will expire 12 months from the date of the call with AT&T. The original $15 monthly credit did not expire. These are very different discounts. I informed them of my intention to lodge this complaint despite this attempt, since what they are offering is not substantively what they represented at the time of sale.

On May 24th, I discovered the account was additionally limited by a 150gb per month data usage cap. Usage over 150gb/month are billed at $10 for each 50gb.

My original DSL account did not have a cap on the plan. The CSR pitched the uVerse products as an alternative to DSL. I had seen in fine print that uVerse had a data cap of 250gb. She confirmed this. She also confirmed that my DSL did NOT have a cap. Therefore, I proceeded with the upgrade transaction.

During our call with AT&T on May 24th, 2013, the company refused to remove the cap from my Internet account. They refused again to restore me to my old plan before I was intentionally duped into buying the new plan.




Full Story:  A few weeks ago on April 11th, 2013, I contacted AT&T to explore various options for my account, including the following: to increase the speed of my DSL line, remove the Landline and enable a "naked" DSL line, or simply cancel the account and move to another service provider.

Years ago, BellSouth issued a standing discount to my bill that amounts to a $15 a month discount off the DSL line. This was to win my business from Earthlink, who had botched my account so severely that they lost my business though I was Mindspring Customer #224, yeah that far back. The discount extended by BellSouth was not a limited time discount associated with a bundle or a contract. The discount has been on my account for around nearly 5 years.

During the call a few weeks ago, I was told that the discount could not be offered if I dropped the landline to select a "Naked" DSL plan. Instead, she could increase my line speed to 6.0 for an additional $10 per month on my plan, implying the discount would remain, since normally the increase should $25 per month for the enhanced services I was purchasing.

Last night, I received the latest bill since the changes were made. The bill was dramatically higher. The DSL portion of the bill increased by approximately $25. Upon closer scrutiny, I noticed that the Discount had been removed.

This afternoon, Today, May 6, 2013, I contacted AT&T to address the discrepancy with my billing where upon I reached with Joy in the Chicago business office. She stated the Customer Retention department extended the offer and made the changes, so they would have to service my inquiry. She dropped the call in an attempt to transfer me, after 15 minutes on hold.

I called back, and started the process from scratch with  Miss Johnson in Nashville TN who is in the Customer Relations Department. She stated thatAT&T no longer offers these bundle discounts. Furthermore, the discount I was enjoying was for only for a limited time.

I stated this was not the case and that the discount had been on my account for several years, and was not associated with a bundle, package, or limited in any way in terms of duration, nor has it ever been renewed, since it never expired.

She then offered to restore a discount in the equivalent amount, but that it would be for a limited time. I then replied that I would like my account restored in terms of the plan and the discounts to how it was configured before their department changed it a few weeks ago.

She denied this possibility, stating that she could not honor what had been offered since the original discount had expired. I explained again, that the discount had no expiry, and was in full force and effect when I called a few weeks ago and approved the upgrade to a faster line for $10 more per month. I also indicated that at this point I would need to draft a complaint to the FCC for Slamming and Misrepresentation. She then put me on hold for 33 minutes while she sought the authority of a person in "Leadership", which must be a new corporate euphemism for her manager or supervisor.

After around 30 minutes on hold awaiting someone from a HIgher Authority to intervene, she came back and said, "If I had a way I would it but I can't restore your account to the way it was. That discount should only have endured for 6 months.  But, we are not going to go back and charge you for all that time you should not have the discount." Not only was the discount not limited to a specific time frame as she alleges, but she also applied intimidation by saying they could go back and bill me for all that time, but they are going to be nice and not go back and do so, which is how I heard it when she said "we are not going to go back and charge you for all that time you should not have the discount.".

Over the past several years since the discount has been applied, I have had several instances of contact with BellSouth and AT&T to revisit my services and review any new offerings they may have available. At no point was I told that the discount had an expiration. I was told on multiple occasions that if I made changes to the account the discount would end, and therefore I refrained from taking any upgrades. However, when I approved the upgrade changes a few weeks ago, I did confirm with AT&T that the discount would persist on my account as it always had.

Heather Team Lead Customer Relations Nashville joined the call after 33 minutes of hold time. I read this entire letter to her. She offered to apply a credit for the discount to my bill, but 'the discount would expire after 12 months and that I would need to sign a contract with them to even get the discount.'

I replied saying that "This is not all acceptable. I was offered a enhanced DSL service for $10 more a month. I made sure the representative was aware of the nature of the standing discount, and that I did not want to change the account if the discount would end. Furthermore, she agreed to this discussion, and never made any mention of the discount going away, an expiration date applying to the discount, or that I would need a contract to enjoy the discount.All that was said was that I would have my DSL line speed to 6.0 for an additional $10 per month. If you are unable to honor what your company represented, then I will have to proceed with the complaints, as well as publishing this complaint via Social Media to a wide and public audience, since this amount to lying to your customers, and perhaps could be classified as Slamming, since we are being placed into a new and more expensive plan without agreeing to the terms that were originally offered to us."

She then had to get DSL Rentention to go to work re-establishing the discount. This portion of the call took another _____. She would come back with periodic updates, one of which was that the DSL team was being blocked by their own system from re-establishing the discount, and they were seeking out their Team Lead to proceed past that point.

Ultimately, they claimed to be unable to honor the deal that was originally offered, a DSL line speed increase for $10 additional to my account without an expiration to the discount or a contract.

Team Lead Heather eventually gave me a $46.40 credit to offset the removed discounts back to the time of the change to my account, a 50% line discount with no contract for six months, and an $8 per month discount to my land line for twelve months.

I said that while this is a step in the right direction, this remedy neither restores me to where I was before the changes were made to my account, nor provide me the terms of the agreement that were made when I was sold the upgraded service. So in either case, I told her that I accept these for the time being, but they do not constitute a conclusion to the claim I am making.

The entire call lasted around two hours.

Fri May 24th 2013: In regards to an email notification that I had exceeded my 150GB data cap, I contacted AT&T Billing at 1-800-288-2020. I reached a CSR named Termina, and recounted the entirety of this letter, and inquired as to why I was never informed a data cap would be placed on my account when I switch to the 6.0 DSL. She was cordial and helpful, but otherwise unable to personally resolve this issue. Hitherto, my prior 1.5 DSL plan did not have a data cap. She put me in touch with the Technical Department, but the Tech CSR dropped the call. Termina was still on the line, and shared that the Tech CSR had expressed a negative attitude and was otherwise unwilling to help, and was therefore not surprised that the call was dropped, and that she would reach a Supervisor in the Technical Support department.

After several minutes, Tech Support Supervisor Abiyah took over the call. I had to recount the entirety of the story. I discovered that AT&T began placing data caps on new DSL lines,s he was unsure of the exact time frame, somewhere between 12-24 months ago.  Therefore she unable to change the status of the account and remove the cap. We did discuss the possibility that account be notated that the customer should be credited for overages if I were to call in and request. But, that annotation would only appear on the Tech Support view of my account, and not on the billing department's view. Therefore, she had to bring the Billing Department on the line in a conference call to proceed with the issue.

#Atlanta #AT&T, #bellsouth #charter #CLEC #telco #comcast, #earthlink #FBI #FCC  #FTC #georgia #internet #ISP #sprint #telephone #verizon #Slamming #Fraud #Fail #folllowmefridaydontsaymaybe

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@ATTCustomerCare @att @CNNMoney @ClarkHoward @MSNBC @foxnews @11AliveNews @wsbradio @CNBC

Howell Mill Hell, gridlocked eternity.

Two years later the dust has settled on the controversial Howell Mill Hell Road improvement projects. 


After hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, over one year of construction, repeated news coverage, and a small cottage industry of blogs following the story, here we are two years later. Traffic is as bad or worse than before the city "improved" the intersection at Howell Mill and Chattahoochee. 


Why? The plan they invested in was based upon a design from the 1980's, that was later scaled down in the early 1990's, then mothballed. Instead of doing any new research for growth trends, they simply took the plan out of storage, dusted it off, and sent the boys to work tearing up the road. 


I write this article because it is high time that we take our district in hand. It is currently choked by traffic, it's value reduced by the congestion, and the poor design of the corridor. Reference the Bank of America ATM machine... or the Einsteins and Wendy's.. all of which force you to access their businesses by crossing up to three lanes of busy traffic at a clogged intersection. They could have had access to the Howell Mill District Shopping Center, and thereby been able to use a traffic light. Reference the entrance to the Starbuck's and Verizon that is so narrow that you have to either stop traffic to make a right, or hit the curb to make the turn.  How about the Firestone and Arby's? No light access, even though the new light is right there next to the property. 

The City appears incapable of doing anything to remedy the situation even though we have the only SuperWalmart in the City limits and Piedmont Hospital West across the street.

Let's form our own Howell Mill Corridor TAD and Planning Unit to gain the ability to accomplish it's own projects using it's own funds raised from the property taxes. Perhaps we should form our own City? No, I am kidding, but seriously a TAD is very feasible.

As another example of engaging the public then simply burying the results, read the report "Upper Westside LCI Concept Prioritization Exercise" calling for "street car/trolley loop along Northside Drive/Marietta Street/Howell Mill Road and the Surrender of Atlanta Park at the intersection of Howell Mill Road and Marietta Street" as the resident's highest priority. This report was published in June 2005! Five years later, nothing has been done. How about a discussion of at least allowing a private trolley to operate? We do not necessary need the City to pay for all of this! So excuses about budget shortfalls are just shortsighted. 


Yes, it does look a bit nicer with new paint, fresh asphalt, a slight change in the lanes, but in no way does this expenditure address the problem. It does amount to yet another example of poor planning and wasteful spending by our city officials. 


And they we're made well aware of this before they ever broke ground, even hosting townhall charettes complete with Georgia Tech and Georgia Conservancy planning pundits to give the dialogue some sense of credibility. At the end of the day, none of the results of the research and public input were used to forge a plan that would be sustain the coming growth. We are just lucky, in an ironic sense, that the economy fell on it's face, since the 3000+ zoned units that would use that intersection are now on-hold,  pending the much-heralded economic recovery.


For my part, I took the time to develop a proposal, and shopped it around to various people such as Jim Borders at Navarre Properties, City of Atlanta Streets (Nursif Qadir), Jud Ready, Clair Muller, Feliciana Moore, Mayor Franklin, various NPU-D officials, and former Mayoral candidate Mary Norwood. Scott Taylor at Carter, the folks at Selig, and Winter Properties were all given a copy. Ask Selig what happened to their Development Impact Fees they paid to the City of Atlanta when they were approved for the Howell Mill District Project. Practically not one dime was spent to restructure the Howell Mill Corridor to accommodate one the largest developments in Atlanta besides Atlantic Station or the Georgia World Congress Center's expansion, the latter faces into a neighborhood overrun by crime and potentially endangers visitors to our city, since we have done nothing in the past four years to address this obvious problem. I digress, which is an all too easy thing to do in this City. There are just too many easy targets that are hard to ignore.


The concept of improvements included solutions for Howell Mill intersections from Collier to Chattahoochee Industrial. A major component features a traffic circle providing three lanes of continuous flow around the two blocks at the intersection of Howell Mill and Collier over to the Willie's, and giving direct access to Northbound 75 without the need for much of the volume to ever use Howell Mill. 


The City officials confused this plan with a plan referred to as "the Howell Mill Bypass". I had not heard of that proposal when i draft the Howell Mill Traffic Circle, but there are only minor similarities. 


 The only one who was ardently opposed was Mr. Borders. He thought that retail would suffer unless two traffic was available. I wonder what he thinks these days, now that the traffic is parked both ways on the two way road? Now that Smyrna-Vinings residents clog our streets taking the back way home to Cobb County? Now that his company's properties are not suitable for so-called liveable development owing to the smog, noise, congestion, and gridlock that encircles Navarre's holdings at Howell Mill? 




If you are interested in actively working on pulling together a Howell Mill TAD composed of residents, commercial property owners, and business owners, then please contact me at 678.389.9903 or bgrant@conviviagroup.com


twitter.com/bryangrant

Senator Saxby Chambliss: Oil exploration along the Ga Coast

Dear Senator Chamblis,

Thank you for your response to our letters about the exploration and extraction of oil along the Georgia Coast, the Outer Shelf being the chief parcel of my personal concerns.

Unfortunately, your position only focuses on the national energy security strategy as related to Oil and Natural Gas. Furthermore, this particular tactic represents little more than a reactionary short-term stop gap measure, rather than a well conceived plan to stabilize our nation. As I wrote to President Bush seven years ago concerning ANWR, I would have less of a problem with prospecting for oil in these sensitive areas so long as we are putting forth significant efforts to reduce our dependency on non-renewable fuels. Practically nothing has been done towards finding alternative ways to keep our country's energy supplies viable besides actually in creasing our consumption of oil by incentives consumers to purchase gas guzzling vehicles. Once an area like ANWR is exploited, we have to keep looking for our next fix like some mendicant drug addict, yet we have not invested in other means to alleviate our needs. We find ourselves back at square one, over and over again, compelle to make war to secure our economic interests.

As a nation, we have consistently failed to foster these alternative means to power our economy. Electric cars were removed from the roads (EV1), despite high levels of customer satisfaction, good vehicle performance, and very low emmissions from the actual vehicle. Hybrids cost more than regular cars to maintain and purchase, the hybrid credit falling far short of the price differential it was designed to offset. The farm vehicle credit was reduced, but you still get a hefty credit for buying a huge vehicle if you are an LLC. The farm vehicle credit is several time larger than the hybrid credit. The gas guzzler tax was completely repealed in 2005. The failure to regulate building material energy efficiencies and allowing a mushrooming housing market to build cheaply has over burdened our already over taxed utilities wasting our energy both in the time it takes to work long enough to pay the bills and in terms of the overall energy consumption. Our failure to secure global commodities agreements has left the door wide open; allowing China to pin down the resources we need, has placed our entire economic future in peril. This has lead to a $1.36/Euro from a $.83/Euro in 2001. We have all lost in real dollars about 39% of our former purchasing power. ( read why here) Meanwhile, the government has distracted us with an agonizing war that only benefits the companies who have the contracts to rebuild what is destroyed. Meanwhile, oil prices have significantly INCREASED since President Bush from the deck of the carrier declared, "Mission Accomplished". We have not necessarily reduced our exposure to terror. If buying fuel from countries who sponsor terror increases the threat of terror, then we are cutting our nose to spite our face.

Related to this matter, four years ago I wrote and submitted to the Icelandic Parliament a road map to a hydrogen economy based on their access to geothermal resources. They are well along into the actual deployment of this proposal and are reaping the benefits . Currently, I am working with a Utah based company that has already developed fuels systems that supplement fuel with Hydrogen to gain 20-30% mileage performance improvements, quad fuel vehicles (H2, Ethanol, NG, Unleaded), and the founder, Tai Robinson, is the first American to successfully drive round trip on Hydrogen only.This was accomplished nearly 4 years ago. (published Press Releases & Coverage)

The crucial mission for our nation involves energy security and economic sustainability. Your plan would only serve as a knee jerk addictive reaction which only make certain companies that sponsored certain political campaigns a little bit more profitable, yield minuscule amounts of crude to the national supply, and would certainly endanger our state and national treasures for the short term goal of energy exploration.

We have in our state of Georgia one of the leading think tanks for energy security. Mr. John Endicott is the Director for the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy at Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College. The center hosts a regular series of presentations which are attended by the military as well as private sector individuals. You would find establishing a dialogue with this resource to be formative and provocative.

In closing, your position lacks the foresight necessary to stabilize the energy security of our nation. I call upon you to expand your view of what is possible and the economic growth our state and nation can experience by truly pursuing these alternatives. These alternatives are already proven to be functionally sound. We must, as with most public service related initiatives, legislate the adoption of these technologies on a wide scale so the investors can see fit to patronize this effort.

I invite you to explore these possibilities and deploy the power of your chair as a senator to building a stronger America.

Sincerely,

Bryan "Beau" Grant
Convivia Group
Commercial Real Estate Broker
Skype: malacandra
SecondLife: Jebediah Raymaker
Google Chat: bgrantenator

Letter from Senator Chambliss:

Dear Mr. Grant :

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Department of Interior's initiative to boost oil and natural gas production on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska . I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

High energy costs are hitting Americans in their pocketbooks due to supply problems with oil and natural gas. This plan will begin to alleviate our supply problems and provide us with greater independence from foreign sources of energy by opening up millions of acres for energy exploration.

According to the Department, the program could produce 10 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over 40 years, generating almost $170 billion, in today's dollars, in net benefits for the Nation. The OCS is a vital source of domestic oil and natural gas for America , especially in light of sharply rising energy prices and increasing demand for these resources. This energy production will create jobs, provide greater economic and energy security for America and can be accomplished in a safe and environmentally sound manner.

I will continue to support an energy policy that will make our country less vulnerable to fluctuating gas prices by promoting renewable energy sources, developing alternative sources of energy like hydrogen, encouraging greater use of ethanol and biodiesels, and increasing domestic refinery capacity and domestic sources of fuel.

If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.senate.gov . Please let me know whenever I may be of assistance.