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Saturday, March 13, 2004
Why I Hate Paying Bills

I am in the the hole $230. I have also wasted two hours (and counting) of my life. It's a long story, but here's how it breaks down.

Situation #1 - $75
Up until February, my apartment had Road Runner cable Internet. It worked great, but it cost freaking $60/month. Then Dell had this deal where if you ordered Earthlink cable Internet through them, you'd only pay $40/month, plus get a $75 mail-in rebate. As a freebie junkie, I of course went on Dell's website and signed up. Now all I had to do was activate the service and send Dell my first month's bill.

Time Warner handles the billing for both Road Runner and Earthlink, so in theory it would be easy to make the switch. I'd just have to call Time Warner, and they'd switch the service provider over the phone. The only problem: my room mate Christine is the account holder at Time Warner (she ordered Road Runner because she's the head of the household), but Earthlink is under my name (I signed up for Earthlink because I'm the designated Internet bill payer). So I told Time to switch me over, and they said, "I can't do that. You have to contact Earthlink."
I told them, "Earthlink told me to contact you. I have an order number."
Time: "Are you Christine?"
Me: "No, I'm Jessica, her room mate. I pay the bill."
Time: "The account is under Christine. We can only talk to her."
Me: "I have an order number for Earthlink, and it's under my name."
Time: "Can you hold?"

After a couple minutes, someone else came to the phone and switched the Internet service. Easy enough, right?

Nope. A couple weeks later, Earthlink sent Christine a welcome letter. Those dingbats at Time Warner created another account for her. Not another user name, but a whole account. A couple weeks after that, the first Earthlink bill comes for CHRISTINE. If the bill isn't even in my name, how am I going to get that $75 rebate?

So I call Earthlink and tell them to consolidate the accounts. They told me to contact Time Warner because it was a billing issue. According to Time Warner, there's only one account for our household: Christine's. I told Time that I could pull up two bills on Earthlink's website. Time's response? "Earthlink doesn't bill you for broadband. If you see a bill, it's for dial-up." No, it says clearly on the site that I have cable. I give up. I lose my $75.

Situation #2 - $150
Last December, I threatened to pull out of my Sprint wireless service, and since they didn't want to lose me, they offered me a free $150 phone. Of course, nothing's ever free: I had to pay for the phone up front and submit a mail-in rebate. As I was anxiously awaiting my check, I received notice that my request was invalid. The rebate was only for plans $35+, but I had a $30 plan. Even though the Sprint rep promised me in December that I was eligible for the rebate, I was really going to let this go. I hate disputing charges, but then I thought, "No! I want my $150!"

So I called the Sprint rebate department and was all ready to argue that I would not re-apply for the rebate because a copy of my receipt was back in California, if it still existed. But the rep told me right away that he'd issue me a check. Whew! That was so much easier than the Earthlink fiasco. Actually, it was kind of freaky. It sounded like he was reading from a script. Anyway, I took down the rep's name and ID number in case Sprint made another mistake.

After I got off the phone, I checked my rebate status, and Sprint was only issuing me a $100 check! Dang it, I forgot to tell them that I wanted a 2-year agreement so I could get the full $150. Being the cheap skates that they are, they assumed that I wanted the 1-year contract so they'd only have to pay me $100. No problem, I'd just call back my rep and tell him to correct it.

Can you believe I could not call him back? I re-dialed the number (yes, it was exactly the same because it was stored in my cell phone), and this time I only got an automated menu. No matter how many times I pushed "0," I could not get an actual person to come to the phone. AAAAAAAAAGH.

Situation #3 - $5
When I bought my new phone from Costco, it was supposed to come with free voice dialing for a year (normally it's $5/month). When I activated my phone, I told the Sprint rep about the Costco deal , and she was like, "The Costco discount might not come right away, so I'll just sign you up for our intro offer. Sprint will give you free voice command dialing for two months, and after that time, the Costco discount will have kicked in."

I just looked at my wireless bill, and there's an error. The Costco discount never kicked in. This month, my voice dialing trial expired, and I have an extra $5 charge on my bill. I'm too tired to dispute it now. Maybe I'll try tomorrow.

See, this is why you should never sign up for rebates or special deals. This is how they sucker you! I've spent the last two hours disputing my bills and another hour writing this entry. So, actually I've lost three hours of my life.

posted by Jessica at 11:21 PM |

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