With all the AOL gripes we've had about hard-to-cancel service, I thought I'd heard every conceivable excuse an ISP could come up with for keeping an account going after the customer thinks it's closed. But another much criticized ISP, Hughes Networks' DirecWay satellite service, came up with a new one: a mystery "child" account that was born when the master account was cancelled.
A reader who had a DirecWay account for a number of years decided to cancel the service. "In early October, I called Hughes to cancel my account," the reader wrote. "After over two hours on the phone and being hung up on once, the rep told me she finally found my account and cancelled it. Feeling uneasy about the experience, I also cancelled the credit card that Hughes Network Systems was automatically billing. I stopped using the service, disconnected the modem, and uninstalled the software."
In February, however, the reader received a letter from Hughes Networks. "They said I had a past-due balance of $139.32," the reader wrote. "I called Hughes and was told that I had a master account and a 'child' account. The master account was closed in October when I called, but the child account remained active. I told him I only had one account, one service on one PC, and was only being billed for one account. He could see the record that I had cancelled on October 6, 2005. I told him I had not used the service since that date."
Although it was obviously Hughes' mistake, the customer service rep refused to correct it. "He could see that this was Hughes' error," the reader wrote. "Nonetheless, he told me I owed the money. He told me if I wanted to dispute it, I had to write a letter stating all the facts and fax it to corporate, which I did. I waited and heard nothing. Fearing collection charges and damage to my credit, I decided to pay it just to get clear of this company."
Hughes didn't make it easy even when the reader decided to pay the mistaken charges. "I called and spent another hour on the phone," the reader wrote. "I again verified that all my accounts were cancelled, then attempted to pay by credit card. They even had trouble taking my money at this point! The rep told me the computer kept saying the amount he was trying to collect exceeded the balance on the account. I feel Hughes stole my money for services they did not render. They knew it was a billing error but refused to put it right. This company is unethical, has horrible information systems, horrible customer service, and I will never, EVER, deal with Hughes again."
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