AT&T

Watch out for the salesman there named SAM. He seems like a nice, personable guy, but he’s very shady. While I was there to get a new phone, he LIED to me about pricing for adding TV service, by telling me the «special is $ 20.95 per month», and «Couldn’t I afford $ 20.95 a month?» I asked three different ways to make sure the pricing was exactly that. However, it turned out to merely be a $ 20.95/month DISCOUNT from the $ 82 price (before a big stack of other fees, but that part was expected).
He tried to sneak phone insurance into my contract without even asking. Then, after I insisted that it be removed, he did NOT, and later tried to get me to sign the contract with the unwanted insurance still on it. There were other problematic things, but these are enough.
Now, if it was a simple matter to cancel the TV service after finding out the true price, the story would be finished. However, AT&T wanted to charge a huge fee for breaking the contract. It took threatening a class action lawsuit for FRAUD (google it – many other people have been deceived the same way by AT&T salespeople), many phone calls, dozens of transfers to other departments, and multiple levels of management before they agreed to remove that cancellation fee.
Then, I had to do the errand to return the equipment through UPS. AT&T did not credit my account for this return. They have treated this as a «collection», only one month after the due date for returning the equipment (which was done on time), and refused to allow me to add another phone line on my account for my son until this erroneous charge for equipment was paid. We spent 2 hours in this AT&T store tangling with the AT&T billing staff, with no luck. Thirty more minutes with a representative online with the UPS tracking number cleared the bill. UPS told me that they have had hundreds of complaints for exactly the same thing. So… DON’T START UVERSE SERVICE unless you think you’ll keep it FOREVER, or don’t mind spending your time hassling with AT&T’s multiple layers of bureaucracy.
In all, SAM’S DISHONESTY cost me literally over 20 hours of time in sorting this out. RUN from him. He seems like a nice guy – and he probably is – but he will squeeze you for as much as he can, while pretending to be your buddy.
UPDATE: My internet service was abruptly cut off, because AT&T STILL didn’t credit me for returning the TV equipment, even after one of their reps told me she had corrected it in their system.
Multiple phone calls, with numerous transfers to «the dept. that handles this» yielded dozens of reps acknowledging that the system shows that the equipment was returned on time, yet to turn my internet service back on, I had to pay over $ 200 for the «non-​return» fee, and wait to be credited in a couple of months!!! If I was a violent person, Sam would need to go into hiding! For his $ 10 commission, he has cost me tremendously!
Anthony, one of the managers, tried to help, but then dropped the ball. I asked him to step in with his own company to clean up this mess, and he tried for a little while, but then I never heard back from him.