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Telepacific installed a T1 service which I did not order. I never plugged the router in and requested that they correct the issue back in 2005. (You can read some background in one of my previous posts here.) The whole issue caused us to drop Telepacific as a vendor and move on to other providers. However, today, we are still being plagued by this credit. When we planned our move to a new location, we contacted Telepacific for information on a move, but before I let them process anything, I requested information on the status of that credit. It turns out they had switched customer services reps on us and the new rep had no idea what I was asking about. He investigated and discovered the research on the request went to a certain point and just died. He picked it up and started it again, but failed to contact us with the resolution. We determined that we were never going to see any of that credit and chose a new provider. Once we sent notice to discontinue service, we also decided that all future billing should go to the credit. Then just as we were trying to cut over our services, Telepacific held our primary numbers hostage in an effort to get us to pay the past due amount of about 2700.00. We finally contacted a Vice President in the company that cleared us out of collections and allowed the numbers to transfer.  When we called collections to find out the status, we were informed that we were not in collections. That only lasted one billing period. Now we are back in collections.

I now have the notes they took during the process of researching the extra T1. It doesn't show any of the notes taken before our new customer service rep, though I know they had them because the new rep read them to me. My original complaint was issued long before May 2011 when he started his notes. He miss documented my explanation, however; they did go back an recalculate what the credit would be. Their calculations show the credit to be 29,000 dollars, but it was denied because the dispute was not placed within the 45 days per contract. 

They specify, "If you have a bona fide dispute with any of the amounts on the invoice, you shall pay all amounts not in dispute by the Pay By Date and provide us with a written request for a billing adjustment, together with all supporting documentation, with 45 days after the Pay By Date or your right to any billing adjustment shall be waived..." This allows them to be sloppy in their order processing and allow for unused services to be billed ad infinitum and make it the responsibility of the customer to harass the provider for correction. Besides, the complaint isn't about one bill, it's about the entire process of billing and not following through. What date shall we apply? What Pay By Date should we count from? Telepacific admits no responsibility for wrong doing here. If we go by my original request to have the circuit removed back in 2005, then isn't that within the 45 days of the first Pay By Date? Of course I don't have any evidence of submitting such a request. And they on the other hand have no evidence that we ever used that circuit. It sat there for 5 years staring them in the face with an alarm on it indicating there was no connection. In such a situation, it seems only  fair that both parties should accept some responsibility for the oversight. Both parties are at fault. But instead, Telepacific insists on waging a war to collect $4000. Our only recourse it to go to the PUC, which if we had been notified, we would have already done, but though our customer service rep was notified of both the denial and the recommendation to take this to the PUC, it was never forwarded to us.

It was because of this mind set and the fact that customer service has failed at every step of the way to follow through that we dropped Telepacific. I have other customers that also use Telepacific services which will probably get replaced because of their poor performance. The only reason some people don't move is because of the pain of changing telephone companies. i.e. lines don't get forwarded, the fax lines don't work. Roll over doesn't work. The 800 number isn't being forwarded. And the worst of all, the company releasing numbers to the new vendor stalls at every step, which is exactly what Telepacific did as we tried to move away from them.