A Los Angeles couple was shocked after the bill for their AT&T landline – which they use for their gardening business – jumped from about $50 a month to $1,2000.
Cheryl Robles and her husband Manuel Robles recently received a shockingly high bill and thought there may have been a system error to account for the issue.
‘It has to be a mistake. It has to be a mistake,’ Cheryl told NBC 4 in an interview.
The couple reached out to AT&T and were told that there had not been an error.
‘They were no longer going to support landlines. Or they didn’t want to support landlines. And that’s why the price increased,’ she said.
One woman who works for the California Public Utilities Commission said AT&T has been trying to drop landlines for some 500,000 Californians in recent months.
Cheryl Robles (pictured) and her husband Manuel Robles recently received a $1,200 landline bill as opposed to their previous $50 a month
The landline bill came from their provider, AT&T
Cheryl and Manuel have run their gardening business for 37 years and have always used their landline to have customers contact them, she said.
The Simi Valley resident told the local outlet that while she has been pushing to move over to a cell phone exclusively, Manuel has always wanted to keep it.
‘My husband wanted to keep a landline. He’s very old-fashioned. I wanted to change to a cell phone. And he didn’t want to go that way,’ Cheryl said.
His insistence on keeping the landline, however, could have ended up costing them.
As part of their story, NBC reached out to AT&T who did not answer their questions.
The outlet asked if AT&T was planning to pull back landline services for customers in Southern California but did not receive a response from the company.
After they reached out, AT&T ultimately changed the price of Cheryl and Manuel’s bill back to $50 a month.
They told the couple in a statement that the quadruple-digit bill was due to an ‘internal billing system error,’ despite their initial statement to Robles.
The woman and her husband ended up dropping their landline anyway.
‘I told my husband that this is what happens because we stayed with a landline. It’s time to change to a cell phone,’ Cheryl joked.
Robles with the NBC 4 team who helped get her bill back down to its normal rate of $50
According to Ann Marie Johnson with the public advocates office at the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC), Cheryl and Manuel are not alone in their situation.
Hundreds of thousands of Californians – and even more Americans in general – still rely on a landline to communicate with the world.
Johnson said she doesn’t know if AT&T is increasing rates to bump off landlines but the service provider is trying to stop providing landline service to nearly 500,000.
The initiative is targeted at those in an area where there isn’t another provider.
AT&T has even asked the PUC for permission to dump these landlines, which Johnson says she is fighting against, primarily for safety reasons.
‘Californians across the state rely on these phone lines to make sure they’re able to dial 911, receive alerts,’ Johnson told NBC 4.
‘So these communication lines are essential and a lifeline for many,’ she continued.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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