Hi,

I have two phone lines from ATT - one that is used in CT, and another
in PA. Now, recently, for the past 4-5 months, the phone that is in CT
has been working very poorly. For eg. a. 90% of phone calls do not
come through, b. Lines get disconnected often, etc. I tried working
with ATT to resolve the issue, but I was told that the phone equipment
might have been faulty. The phones are "free phones" that I had
received a couple of years back when I signed up with ATT.

Today, I came to know that ATT had made some major changes to it's
TDMA network in this region sometime back, whereby, TDMA phones were
losing connectivity. Most ATT phones out here are GSM now. I explained
that given that ATT made changes, the customer (me) who has still paid
for the services, should be reimbursed - cause ATT obviously took the
privilege of receiving phone calls away from them. After all, if you
pay for a monthly phone service, you expect to get that service. Of
course, they were not willing to negotiate, nor offer a standard GSM
phone to restore phone connectivity.

Further, this phone is used on an overseas ATT partner network (ATT
Worldconnect programme) in Europe using an European GSM-band phone.
For that and other ATT cell phone charges I accumulate every year, I
pay ATT in excess of $ 4000 per year just in phone calls.

I was thus a bit taken aback, when they refused to credit for 3 months
of service charges, despite the fact that they had themselves degraded
the service to serve their business interest.

I think it's time now to switch carrier - but I still want that
service charge refunded to me. If ATT fails to realize that they will
lose a 4grand/year customer because they don't want to reimburse for
their own shortcoming, it's not something I can help. How can I go
about getting this money back - I am tired of paying them all this
money, and clearly, they have neither the business sense nor the
goodwill to accept their mistakes. In addition, if there are further
steps I can take please let me know - is there a consumer complaint
bureau / some agency that can take firm and fast action against such
daylight-robbery style gung-ho practices by a failing miserable
ingrate carrier.

Thanks for reading my note,

With regards,

- Nataraj.