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Friday, August 4th, 2017 4:31 PM

Charged for Returned Phone

I am a longstanding, loyal, paying customer of AT&T. In April 2017 my wife upgraded her Samsung Galaxy s7 Edge to the new Samsung Galaxy s8 on the AT&T Next plan. She pre-ordered the phone and as part of a promotion was told she would receive the Samsung VR headset and a 128 GB memory card. My wife received the phone in the mail but received no additional equipment as promised. This was not a huge deal to us, we felt ripped off but didn’t want to spend hours on the phone trying to correct the issue, so we let it go.

 

Enclosed with the phone was a pre-paid AT&T smart label for my wife to return her Samsung Galaxy s7 Edge. She promptly packaged the phone back in its original packaging (which she had saved upon purchase) and put the phone in the box provided and affixed the label provided. We returned the phone to the USPS store located at 1050 N Hills Blvd. in Reno, NV 89506 on April 21, 2017.

 

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017 my wife received a message that her phone had not been received by AT&T. We promptly called and spoke with one of AT&T’s service reps in another country. This representative did some investigation and informed us that it appeared that the phone had been delivered to AT&T’s Texas facility but had not been scanned/checked in yet. The representative assured us that the phone would be scanned in and that we would not be charged for the phone. We were also told that this is a common occurrence for returns. After 40 minutes or more on the phone we hung up assured that the phone would be checked in and we would not be charged.

 

On May 27, 2017, my wife received another text message stating that her phone had still not been received and that we were to be charged $278.24 on our next wireless bill. We were on vacation when we received the text message and still we promptly called AT&T. We again spoke to an AT&T service representative in another country who only understood part of what we were saying. We spent another 40 minutes or more on the phone explaining the situation. The representative again did some research into the phone and said they could see it was delivered to the AT&T Texas facility but had not been scanned/checked in. They assured us that it would be checked in and we would not see any additional charges on our bill. We asked for the representative to email us the information so that we would have documentation that the phone would be checked in and that our account would not be charged. The representative stated that they would send us an email verification right after we hung up the phone. We disconnected the call and received no email.

 

The charge $278.24 was posted to our May 18-June 17, 2017 billing cycle. We again called AT&T at the end of June. We spoke to another AT&T representative in a foreign call center. This representative investigated the charges and investigated the return. This representative also stated that he could see the phone was received in Texas but that it was never scanned or checked in. He stated that he would open a “case” into the missing phone and that the charges would be removed. When asked what we should do about paying the bill he stated that we should just pay the service portion of $283.41 and not to pay the $278.24 charge as it would be reversed after the case was investigated. He provided us with a case number: J78070396. He also provided us with an AT&T tracking number for the phone: 637575126616. He stated that he would additionally provide this information in a verification email to us after we were done with the call. After an hour long phone conversation we disconnected feeling confident that this issue would finally be resolved. We received no email from the representative.

 

On Friday, July 28, 2017, my wife started to receive daily recorded phone calls from AT&T urging her to contact AT&T about her service. We called AT&T on Tuesday, August 1, 2017 and were first routed to the billing department at an US call center. The woman stated that our call was routed to her because it was set up for suspension because of the overdue charge of $278.24 for the phone. The woman could not assist us with the return issues and transferred us, again to a representative outside of the country. This representative, DJ, looked at our account and account notes. He spend at least 10-15 minutes looking into the charges and he could not figure out why we were being charged. He stated that his supervisor was opening a case into the phone and charges. I asked for the case number but he said he could not get me that information until after we were off the phone. We asked if we would receive the case number in an email and he said yes. We asked if he wanted our email address because we have not received any emails that we were promised before. He said, no, and that we would get a text message after the call. I asked how long after the call we would receive the message and he said sometime by the end of the day. I continued to question what we do about the charge for the phone. The representative stated that he would call collections immediately after our phone call and that our service would not be disconnected. I asked how we could be assured he would do this as we have been promised things on the phone three other times that did not happen. This representative told me 5 times, “Disregard the charges, they will be eliminated on the bill”. Five times is not an exaggeration he actually kept repeating the same statement after every question I asked to get me off the phone. After 50 or more minutes on the phone, we disconnected hoping the issue was resolved.

 

Three days after the phone call our service was suspended. When calling AT&T again, we were not allowed to talk to a representative about our account until the past due charges were paid. There was no way to talk to anyone about the account unless we paid the $278.24 we were wrongly charged by AT&T. They offered no means to dispute the charges. We could only pay the money and now we will have to call again.

 

I cannot believe that I was charged for a phone that I returned, that I do not have possession of and that has no service. This device was either lost by AT&T or stolen by one of its employees and meanwhile I, a longtime customer of AT&T, was forced to pay for AT&T’s error. This is compounded by the fact that I was lied to on the phone on four different occasions by AT&T employees. Where is the accountability for a huge company?

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230.7K Messages

7 years ago

Hello @collinsstar


When returns are not accounted for, we definitely like to have them situated immediately. I would love to be of assistance today!


If you can please send us a message @ATTHelp I would be more than happy to work with you to get you the best resolution and answer available for this issue. Please include your full name and phone number.


I look forward to working with you. Have a great rest of your day!


James, AT&T Community Forums

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