You go to your mail box and get the mail. One of the many tasks we do as women. You throw it on the counter and scan through it hoping to find the latest J. Crew catalog or some Baby's R Us coupons. Instead you find nothing but bills. Doesn't it seem like you just paid that one and that one. So you put them aside and tell yourself, you'll go through them tomorrow.
So tomorrow is here. You break out a calculator, maybe and your check book. Some of us are ahead of the times and pay by computer. Do you take the time to read your bill before you write the check? Well, you should. Look at it and ask questions. Read the paragraphs they add in between sections of your bill. You could probably save yourself some money.
For example, Bellsouth, which is the new At&T, is such a monopoly and in my opinion very greedy. It started with my long distance. I had a flat rate plan. So I could make as many calls as I wanted a month. I started noticing how many minutes I was using. It was next to nothing. It would be cheaper for me to switch to $.10 a minute or whatever it was. Did I do anything about? No, I let it go.
Next month, get my bill. I start reading between the lines. I notice that they are going to start charging me in advance for my long distance. So that means I would be getting charge $27 plus another $27. HELLO! What the hell do they need to do that for? I am good for the money.
So that really ticked me off. I found out that my dad got rid of his long distance and now has Big Red Wire for Florida they charge $.6 in state and $.02 out of state. You give them a credit card and they charge it monthly. If you can get someone else to join that's long distance. They give you $5.00 worth of long distance.
So then I started thinking, maybe that would work for me. And then how could I lower my bill even more? I went on the AT&T website and looked through their plans and bundles and all that crap. I noticed the plan I had gives about 15 features, but only 9 showed on my bill.
Now I am pumped. So I call my lovely AT&T rep, who was helpful, and asked him about my plan and my features. I told him it looks like I should have 15 and I only have 9. He says "Oh yeah, some of those are just not activated". WHAT!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING?!! Needless to say, we worked that out. I added some features left a few stupid ones off. We then moved on to the long distance. Basically I cancelled it. Done!
Well, just got my bill today and you would not believe what they did. They charge me $10 for making changes to my service. They charged me $2.00 for canceling my long distance. Whatever! So I picked up the phone and called my lovely At&t rep , who was still nice by the way. And inquired about the $10 charge. Wellllll, would you know it. That should have been waived. Thank my lucky stars I called because that could have been a deluxe box of Pampers wipees with a coupon or 12 jars of baby food.
It's ridiculous. So all I can say is read your bills and ask questions. That's what customer service is there for.
