TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: AT&T Billing Us For MDNS Account Closed Three Years Ago

AT&T Billing Us For MDNS Account Closed Three Years Ago

Dear telecom readers,

I am looking for assistance in dealing with AT&T over an MDNS (Managed
Data Network Services) account that our company closed in
approximately September 2002. I've been with our company for about 16
months, and I know that none of the DLCIs, PVCs or any physical
equipment associated with the un-killable MDNS account have ever
existed at the company's current address. The company actually moved
to a new city in January 2004. Our bookkeeper tells me the MDNS
account should have been terminated in June of 2002, with an AT&T
technician collecting the Cisco router and CSU/DSU from the company's
former address in September 2002.

We've tried repeatedly contacting various billing departments, a
dispute resolution department, dispute escalation officer and assorted
white collar workers at AT&T without having any luck at getting the
billing stopped. The charges are mounting to multiple tens of
thousands of dollars. I have called the AT&T customer support center
and they agree that there is currently no LMI signal and no live PVC.
They know the assists have been picked up, but they don't know they
were returned to AT&T.

What I'm hoping is that a reader of this digest might know what office
inside AT&T would have issued a work order for the decommissioning of
the MDNS circuit and/or retrieval of the physical assets such as the
router. It be great to know by what name AT&T calls such a work
order, so that we know what to ask them to find in their archives
related to the MDNS account. Hopefully we can make the point that if
they dispatched a technician to pick up their equipment on such and
such a date, there is no way they could have been rendering service
past that date ... and dare I say it, rescind the bills to that point
in time. I am not too hopeful, however, as AT&T seems to be very
capable of ignoring obvious facts.

The SBC merger hasn't helped any either. I tried calling many of the
contact numbers on the AT&T web site. They seem to have all been
absorbed into SBC, and any customer-facing contact points sound like
they are being relayed to off-shore call centers by low quality
voice-over-IP. I'm wondering just how low they can lower the bar for
customer service!

Thanks for any assistance,

Bill

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Are you using AT&T for anything at all
these days, or at least anything which cannot be swapped out to some
other carrier? Unless your company is in a position to toss 'multiple
tens of thousands of dollars' (your wording) at AT&T every year or
so, my suggestion would be to drop them entirely; calculate a final
billing due as you can best estimate it; send them a final payment
marked 'payment in full' and let it go at that. Believe me, they will
contact you soon enough. At the very least, quit paying the disputed
charges once and for all; let _them_ get after you when they
eventually decide they want their money. PAT]

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