Bill Higher Than Expected - Things to know from the AT&T Community

To learn how to read and understand your home phone bill, check out the video above. See how to read prorated charges, taxes, services, and billing in arrears. 

If your Home Phone bill is higher than expected, one of the following listed above may have occured.

mine is now over 200 and i am furious !!

---

@Higglzs wrote:
Each month since receiving adding uverse TV my bill has not been consistent to what the tech tells me. I have been a loyal Att customer for almost 10 years and have never had such issues with a bill. I would like a straight answer and consistent bill. Can someone please do this for me, otherwise I will have to take all my business elsewhere (phones included).

---

You can send a private message to the escalation team at ATT Customer Care and someone will get in touch with you in two to three business days to help you get a resolution to your problems.

To check for their reply, click the little blue envelope.

Here is everything you really need to know when your bill is higher than expected. Everything else AT&T says is just beating around the bush, but this is it. This is what you need to know, should your bill be more than what you were led to expect.

The customer is ALWAYS WRONG at AT&T. They write all these rules and act like there is no other way but to charge you more money. They cause more grief and headache so that they can squeeze more money out of their customers as if their customers are the ones causing undue hardship.

AT&T knows that they are the only game in town and they take your money and spend it on lawyers and marketing so that they can use tactful words so that you can rate your customer service experience well without taking a look at the customer's experience with AT&T as a whole. Oh, that's odd. All the other customers said they're satisfied.

The infrastructure is there, the technology is readily available to serve the customers, but they use your contact information and your desire for Internet access as a way to take you for more than you bargained for. "Well I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do. It's out of my hands." Yep, the upper ups at AT&T don't care about the customers getting a bad deal.

You will never be satisfied as a customer and AT&T will never be satisfied with whatever money they decide you owe them. Terms and conditions are subject to change at any time without notice. You can't get mad at the people they pay to parrot their bureaucratic theft, and you will never get in touch with the people who are calling the shots because they know they are wrong and they are smiling when someone is having a bad experience because they've already written a clause where bad experiences cost the customer more.

Having a problem with your bill? That's because AT&T takes pleasure in taking your money for things that have NO INTRINSIC VALUE. Now that they know where you live, there's nothing you can do about it. Oh, a "discount"? How about being straightforward and reasonable from the start? No, that would mean that customers were satisfied. AT&T pushes customers just to the edge of being totally frustrated so that they are tricked into feeling satisfied by giving AT&T more money than the service is actually worth.

You think AT&T would ask me, a customer, about how they could improve? No. They have millions of customers and if I don't want to pay extra, they'd just as soon not have me as a customer at all. They charge for that too. Not happy? Too bad. Pay AT&T more money. Still not happy? Pay them more money. Eventually you'll learn to be a good serf and keep your mouth shut. Yes my lord, very satisfied. Thank you for not completely ruining my finances. Would you like for me to pay you more? Oh, of course sire, not a problem. I know you have everything you could ever want and the infrastructure is already there, but I think if I gave you more money, you could thoroughly clean yourself when you're done using the restroom. Make sure you flush my hopes dreams and ambitions while you're in there, I won't be needing those with corporations like AT&T in charge. As a matter of fact, is there a way I can just get my whole paycheck deposited directly to you, oh mighty AT&T? I know it's a paltry sum, but it's the least I could do. My main focus in life is to bring you more money than you could possibly need.

My grandparents left New York City because once a month they had to pay some thugs to not break their legs or destroy their bakery. Then the price went up. After that it became once a week. Sure, they liked having their knees intact and a bakery to manage, but at what price? It wasn't worth it. There was no fighting back and the thugs were complicit with the cops, judges and mayor. Every once in a while you hear about mobsters going down for racketeering but that's small fries compared to the shakedown AT&T is doing to every american they come in contact with.

Smile on, AT&T. I can't wait to receive the next email or find a letter in my mailbox which will give me the opportunity to pay you even more money for things I didn't know I wanted until you mentioned it. I'm sure it will be a real "great" deal that I'll never regret or change my mind about. Make sure the charge rate always ends with a 9. That's a good way to make me think that you're always charging less than you actually are. And don't offer me rates that make any sense, after all I'm always going to pay thousands of percentages more than what it costs you. That way, you can hire more people, not to make my customer experience better, but so that they can think of new gimmicks for me to feel great about consuming and paying too much for. Thanks for caring. About yourself.

Oh my, I've been a bad customer. Maybe AT&T will see this and decide they don't want customers like me. I better behave and pay them some more money. Please, take my money. I need you AT&T. I need the service I don't know what I would do without it but I still feel robbed. The pricing makes no sense at all. You get these clever marketing guys who flip around numbers and salesreps who follow their scripts to talk quick and walk a fine line of deception to trick us. I understand if I need to pay a tech to install wires, but once the wires are in place, the rate for service should be cheap and set in stone across the board for all customers. I can understand purchasing hardware, but what I don't appreciate is the arbitrary fees and "discounts" that you could afford with me paying less, but you always want for me to pay more. Everything is compartmentalized, you have your sales, billing, marketing, tech support, primtechs, budgeting, website design, coders of all kinds of languages, this huge clever monster where no one is in control and everything gets justified on paper in pursuit of ever more profits. Well if we move these numbers here, we can pay for more resources over here and then raise rates under this promotion and get more equipment and improve this infrastructure here, find more ways to get more customers on more services we can make up it's complicated and it's dirty. What AT&T needs is for someone to step up and cut it out. I need simplicity in my life, as do all customers. If you could afford for everyone to pay $30 a month for Internet or $15 for a phone line, then charging more must mean that the kid who took my lunch money is now running things at AT&T. You may balk, but television should be free with Internet. It's the same wires and advertisers are paying tons of money to be on television, you could take the money from them if you were actually concerned with helping your customers.

I think I will send this to AT&T so maybe someone can understand and work on genuinely making things better for the customer. Rates can be set in a way that profits and growth directly correlate with the number of subscribers, not random chance of falling for gimmicks or getting scammed into some terrible contract. I could post this all over the Internet, but I want AT&T to see this on their own channels, not some link to check out a commenter. I want this forwarded to the right people, I want it sent in memos and read at board meetings. This thing can pay for itself and still grow. Work the numbers and figure a way to be reasonable with customers without the flowery words and underlying deception. There has got to be a constant rate with the current customer base that can turn 146 billion this year. With that rate low enough, more customers will join, profits will soar and everyone will get to take a holiday.

haha look at this complainer. we got him, huh? stupid customers. bunch of maggots they are

i'm gonna go pay my exhorbitant bill now. i'll feel better, but i'll still be crying on the inside. thanks AT&T. you're always there in the good times and the bad ones. nothing like hearing from you to make my day.

Sr. I am very happy and totally agree with your comments. My English is very bad and have not enough vocabulary to speak like you. Thank you very much.

Pitin

When your discount and promised price (without promos) is NOT reflected right on you bill from the very beginning, I have every right to complain and expect what was promised.  4 months later, I am still fighting.  I supposedly opened a case twice, but no one has responded in a month.  I even requested they listen to all the phone calls.  Every time I call, no one has a phone number to the people who work the cases.  If they do, they are acting ignorant.  I have called several times and even spoken to supervisors...