The
Los Angeles Times reports the surprise that 83-year-old California resident Ron Doriff had when he started receiving strangely
priced bills from his internet provider.
Dorff told me he was accustomed to paying about $51 a month to AT&T for Internet access. Then, in March, he received a bill for $8,596.57.
Doriff is retired and lives on a fixed income. He also isn't making long distance calls and leaving his phone off the hook while he does dishes. He called AT&T, they said they would send someone out to look at his line—they didn't.
Dorff's next monthly bill was for $15,687.64, bringing his total outstanding debt to AT&T, including late fees, to $24,298.93.
If he didn't pay by May 8, the phone company warned, his bill would rise to at least $24,786.16
He got back in touch with AT&T, they sent out a technician who realized that the modem wasn't working correctly—it was grabbing from the wrong access account
from AOL:
Warning: You will incur charges on your phone bill if you select an AOL access phone number that is a long-distance call or is not covered by your local calling plan. Please check with your local phone company to determine whether the access phone numbers you select are local for your calling plan. Remember that members on certain plans may be charged an hourly rate for dial-up connections. See AOL Keyword: My Account for your price details.
So Doriff called to get his
charges reduced. Does AT&T do the right thing? Mistakes happen, right?
He called the phone company yet again. He passed along the technician's verdict and asked if AT&T could lower his bill. [...]
"The woman said they couldn't make an adjustment," Dorff recalled. "I told her I couldn't possibly afford what they wanted. She just insisted that I had to pay it. She was very blunt about it."
Dorff's next call was to me.
After I got in touch, AT&T wasted little time in deciding it would waive the more than $24,000 in charges.
How they allowed this to happen in the first place is a mystery.
"This is a rare occurrence, and we address it on an individual basis," Taylor answered.
She declined to elaborate on whether AT&T's billing system is capable of spotting unusual charges and, if so, why it doesn't routinely do so.