AUBURN, Calif. — An AT&T business customer and Auburn resident is encouraging others to take a second look at their bill every month.
Brad Poore said he a got a call from a spam number purporting to be AT&T and asking if he would like to buy an "internet backup device."
“I’m not interested in buying anything. They quickly said something, and then they hung up. Shortly after that, I received a text message and email essentially confirming my purchase, which I obviously hadn’t purchased anything,” Poore said.
Poore said he immediately called AT&T.
"I verified with them that there was no purchase. Nothing was showing on my account. They told me I didn’t need to worry, so I thought that was the end of it,” he said.
It was actually just the beginning. Poore said he received another email saying his order for an internet backup service device had been shipped.
“The way I’m seeing it is if they’re willing to do that to me, then I don’t know how many other people they’re doing that to,” Poore said.
He filed a complaint with the FCC, and AT&T released information in response to his complaint saying they investigated and determined that Poore was getting communications from a third-party vendor about the equipment in January. Their records showed Poor contacted them Jan. 16 about the service.
They said that while he said he didn't want the service, their records didn't reflect that.
“I absolutely had complained and said I didn’t want the device. And honestly, at the beginning, part of my motivation for calling AT&T was because I thought this was a third-party scammer who was trying to scam AT&T business customers. So I wanted to make sure that AT&T was aware of it, so that they could protect their customers,” Poore said.
In response to the FCC complaint, AT&T said they regret if there was any error or miscommunication and apologized. They also verified that Poore didn't incur any charges for the backup service and provided him with a six-month courtesy adjustment of $321.
The following statement was provided to ABC10 by AT&T:
We have reached out to this customer to ensure we resolved and addressed all his concerns. This did not live up to our high standards for customer support, and we have apologized.
Additional:
- The representative responsible is no longer employed as a contractor.
- We encourage customers to contact us directly if they ever have questions about their account.
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