UVerse TV Cancellation Billing Issue

Agent was wrong. They stopped prorating over 2 years ago. Here is the notice from 2018 (link mentioned is out of date, but the info remains the same).

Thanks for the info Juniper.  What bothers me is yes in fact the agent was wrong.  Now, there is absolutely no accountability on AT&T's part for what they told me and what I expected AT&T to follow thru with.  It looks like it will be treated as if it was my fault for not cancelling at the end of the billing cycle because the prorating policy was updated/changed in the T&Cs fine print over 2 years ago.  This does not seem reasonable that a typical customer would know this or be expected to remember or be expected to do the research ahead of time before calling in to simply cancel service. Huge disappointment!  I would greatly appreciate it if AT&T would reach out to me for an acceptable solution to this problem instead of them approaching it like here is our policy that you did not know about and that we failed to tell you about when it was critical for you to know and we are not going to do anything to actually resolve this for you.

The Customer Service Reps are so incentivized to get you to give them a good call-end rating that they will promise you the winning numbers to the next night's Powerball if they think you'd believe it.  They will tell you what you want to hear, make up stuff when they don't know, etc.  

Apparently once the call is over and the post-call survey is done, apparently it never gets back to their record if the customer subsequently learns that the CSR was blowing smoke.  

Well that explains it then and also gives reasonable insight into why they do things the way they do.

I managed to get an agent on the AT&T chat IM today and explained everything. Before I could completely write out the whole story he had already put together what the issue was after just looking at my account. Again I was promised prorated charges by the agent but in writing via IM and this time another needed change was for the due date to be moved back another 30 days so that the new bill with the supposed prorated charges will generate by the end of this now (current) billing cycle. I asked for the chat to be emailed to me and then was told that was not possible but was then given a chat transaction number that another agent can later reference back to. For myself, I highlighted and copied and pasted the whole IM and saved it in my personal records. Either I am being given the same empty promise but this time with reasonable viable proof or AT&T does in fact still prorate charges for specific situations despite the policy change from two years ago. Looks like I will find out in a couple of weeks what will actually happen. 

Careful, chat lately has been very unreliable. And customer support does not have access to those transcripts. Chat is supposed to be supplemental to customer support, but I wouldn't use it these days as quality of info provided has dropped.

If you actually get the bill adjustment, then great. Just very likely they will not as it is their cancellation billing policy. And no agent can change the due date as that is generated by the system, which further questions the info you were provided by that chat agent.

I looked at my account afterwards and confirmed that the due date was changed.  It even popped up as a notice within the myATT app.  So, no question that they actually did that part, they did.  If chat support is unreliable at least I have the chat conversation in my records thankfully instead of nothing as before.

Hmm, well due date changing might be different for U-Verse then. As some other services (like DirecTV) have never had the option to change it.

Definitely hold onto the transcripts. Still very good chance no adjustment (since there is no obligation that they do so), but you would have documentation to support a BBB complaint if you go that route. If they do follow through with the adjustment, which I hope they do (though experience tells me otherwise), then consider yourself very lucky.

Agents have been giving info that is way outdated for far too long. Even if you get the adjustment I would consider still submitting a BBB complaint on that issue alone.

Hmmm...looked at it again and the original due date is still unchanged. However, there is a scheduled/arranged payment for mid next month that was not there before. The chat correspondence clearly stated that this will prevent any late fees from showing up in the mean time while waiting for next bill cycle to come. Clearly they are not obligated to do the proration but there is now reasonable proof that they promised it. So, if it comes down to it a BBB complaint should help but I am still an AT&T wireless customer. Not sure it is a good idea to piss AT&T off with another service while trying to keep another. Last thing I want is for them to refuse all services to me because of filing such a complaint. But I have never done it before so maybe it will be okay. Who knows...at this point I will just have to wait and see how things pan out. It is annoying but seems to be the only option to clear up all unknowns. AT&T in my experience is always like this when you change anything that is tied to any type of billing. Changing service plans even makes billing very confusing and sometimes makes things seem fishy and ambiguous until the data finally comes. Even when you finally have the data it is exhausting to make sense of in most cases. Lessons learned here is to know how to call in and change things only at the end of the billing cycle. Even then, how do you know what day and what time of day to call in and make a change, the last day of the billing cycle perhaps, LOL?

Traditionally a payment arrangement gives more time to pay bill before being shut off, but does not waive late fees. Chat has been a poor source of information the last few months. Either they are outsourced or perhaps they have new employees with lack of training because of Covid limitations. Remember those transcripts don't get saved on your account, so keep them for your own record or outside (i.e. BBB) complaint.

TV services tend to have any package or optional service changes same day, which results in proration (partial credits and charges according). To minimize that, it is suggested to make changes on the 1st or last day of your bill cycle as makes the bill much easier to read. Usage based services, such as cell phone, tend to make their plan changes effective on the start of the next bill cycle (so no proration). Though some of them used to backdate the plan to the beginning of the current one as a courtesy if needed (better to pay $10 more for the next higher plan than $80 in minute overage for example).

I'm willing to bet large sums that luarez43 wrote that post to be edited later for spam links.