11-02-2022, 05:50 PM
This morning I went online to pay my internet service bill (AT&T). What a surprise when I saw a $9.99 late fee for previous month's service added to our bill! You see, our bill isn't due until the 14th each month and I generally pay it the first week of the month- in this particular case I had paid it on the 6th of October which is in no way late. I checked the screen shot I had made at the time of confirmation, then I grabbed Kdog's phone (which has our bank app on it) and confirmed it there as well. There was no late payment made.
I used the chat feature on the website to dispute the charge and was told I absolutely owed the late fee because payment was not made until October 18th- to which I replied they were full of bullshit! So I did the unthinkable and actually called them personally. Remarkably I got through to an actual service rep within a minute, unremarkable was the fact that the rep's English was nearly worse than my Spanish. It took "Juan" over half an hour to look at his computer screen and see that yes, the bill was paid on time and no, we didn't owe any late fee and then remove it from our bill.
Most people would rather just pay the fee than have to go through the hassle of getting through the automated system until you got to an actual live person and then dealing with someone who barely speaks your language. It is time consuming and frustrating. Kdog is one of those people and the main reason that I alone deal with AT&T- this isn't my first rodeo with them but they are better than other companies I have dealt with in the past.
So I got to wondering- How much money are they making off of "accidently" charging people late fees that they don't owe? AT&T reports having 14.2 million broadband customers in 2022. If they charge erroneous late fees to only 1% of them that's 142,000 customers at $10 a pop. Let's say 25% of them (and that's lowballing) just pay the fee to avoid the hassle- that's 35,500 customers at $10 each for a total of $355,000.00!!! And if they do it randomly every month that equals $4,260,000.00 per year!!!
Over $4 and a quarter million per year just in "accidental" late fees- and we're not even talking about all those other little nickel and dime fees and taxes that are on the bills that nobody even knows what half of them are. Not even funny is the fact that we know if one corporation is doing it then they probably ALL are.
I hope there's a special place in Hell for thieving corporate executives, and I want to reserve a front row seat to watch them all get pineapples shoved up their asses!
*Rant over*
I used the chat feature on the website to dispute the charge and was told I absolutely owed the late fee because payment was not made until October 18th- to which I replied they were full of bullshit! So I did the unthinkable and actually called them personally. Remarkably I got through to an actual service rep within a minute, unremarkable was the fact that the rep's English was nearly worse than my Spanish. It took "Juan" over half an hour to look at his computer screen and see that yes, the bill was paid on time and no, we didn't owe any late fee and then remove it from our bill.
Most people would rather just pay the fee than have to go through the hassle of getting through the automated system until you got to an actual live person and then dealing with someone who barely speaks your language. It is time consuming and frustrating. Kdog is one of those people and the main reason that I alone deal with AT&T- this isn't my first rodeo with them but they are better than other companies I have dealt with in the past.
So I got to wondering- How much money are they making off of "accidently" charging people late fees that they don't owe? AT&T reports having 14.2 million broadband customers in 2022. If they charge erroneous late fees to only 1% of them that's 142,000 customers at $10 a pop. Let's say 25% of them (and that's lowballing) just pay the fee to avoid the hassle- that's 35,500 customers at $10 each for a total of $355,000.00!!! And if they do it randomly every month that equals $4,260,000.00 per year!!!
Over $4 and a quarter million per year just in "accidental" late fees- and we're not even talking about all those other little nickel and dime fees and taxes that are on the bills that nobody even knows what half of them are. Not even funny is the fact that we know if one corporation is doing it then they probably ALL are.
I hope there's a special place in Hell for thieving corporate executives, and I want to reserve a front row seat to watch them all get pineapples shoved up their asses!
*Rant over*
"As an American it's your responsibility to have your own strategic duck stockpile. You can't expect the government to do it for you." - the dork I call one of my mom's other kids
![[Image: Tiny-Ducks.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/10JR2fC/Tiny-Ducks.jpg)