My "Qwest Sucks" Saga

It begins with a different issue. 3 times in 2009, my Qwest account was crammed. Despite being promised refunds, I only ever got a refund on the 2^nd of them. The first I did as I was told and paid the dispute charge. The third time (since I still had not received a refund on the 1^st) I simply refused on principle, and have kept refusing for two years – on a charge of about $8.

Now, on January 28^th 2011, I send a check to Qwest for my regular bill of $28.35. I still have the carbon stub, and the check very clearly was written for twenty-eight dollars and 35/100, but when Qwest sent the charge in to the bank, they shifted the decimal place over two points and took $2835.00 from my bank account.

This shouldn't even be allowed to happen.

The money showed up as a credit on my Qwest account, which I noticed on my Feb bill. So I called Qwest immediately, reported the issue, and specifically asked them if the money had come from my bank account. After investigating for a half-hour, they assured me it had not (untrue, as my bank was soon to inform me).

Qwest then told me the matter would be put under investigation, and they would call me if they needed anything else from me. When I didn't hear from them, I figured the matter had been resolved. A month later, though, the money was still gone from my bank account and I still had the credit on my Qwest bill.

So, on April 1^st, I called Qwest, and they informed me that they needed to make a three-way call with me and my bank to prove that the funds had been taken from my account (begging the question of what they had been doing for the past month). We did that, and I was promised by Qwest that a check would be going out immediately, and that I would have it within the week.

A week-and-a-half later, I hadn't received it, so I called Qwest again (3^rd call), and was informed that the check had not gone out and would not be going out until April 15^th, and to call them on the 25^th if I had not received it. So, on the 25^th, I called Qwest again (4^th call), and was informed that the check had not actually gone out the 15^th but the 18^th, and that I should be receiving it any day now. Another week later, it's now May and I still don't have my money, so I called again (5^th call), and was informed that depending on what center the check had come from, it might take up to a week MORE.

I reported the issue to the FCC, and finally on May 16^th an overnighted check arrives. And it's short.

The wrongfully acquired funds had been automatically applied to the hanging crammed charge (of course) and my Jan bill, then later was applied to my Feb bill. When I called Qwest about this the first time, back in Feb, I was told I would be refunded the original amount minus the Jan bill, but they actually refunded me the current credit balance – essentially meaning I ended up paying my February bill twice. Which should have meant a credit of $29 would show up on my bill, right?

No. Because someone made a manual adjustment to my bill, removing the credit and recharging me for the hanging cram charge – essentially asking me to also pay the charge a SECOND time, on top of causing a full month's payment to disappear.

When I called on THIS issue (6^th call), after being transferred 3 times, and an hour and a half on the phone, I finally got ahold of somebody ready to resolve it. So, Qwest refunded the money to me with a credit to my account, but they charged a "tax" of a few cents on the funds when doing so. Thus, essentially, they wrongfully took $2800 from my account, took 4 months to give it back, and have now charged my a fee for doing so.

1. Charging a fee to refund money they mistakenly and wrongfully acquired should be HIGHLY ILLEGAL.
2. This matter should have been resolved after 1 phone call, not still unresolved after 6.
3. After they finally admitted they needed to send me the money, it shouldn't have taken them 2 and half months to do so. The funds should have been sent immediately.
4. If the funds weren't going to be sent immediately, they should have said so.
5. It shouldn't even be possible for an error like this to occur on a check.