AT&T Charges Couple $300 Due to Losing Satellite Dish in CA Fire
People, you can’t make this stuff up.
The Consumerist blog is showing a news video. A Southern California couple returned from their honeymoon to find their house was on fire.
After the fire, the woman called AT&T to cancel their service. AT&T wanted to know if they had picked up the satellite dish on their way out. The woman replied, “No, that was the last thing on my mind.”
AT&T is still charging them $300 for the dish.
I couldn’t find the video on YouTube so you’ll have to click over to the Consumerist blog to watch it.
Unbelievable.
Update: 5:00 PM EST — AT&T wrote to the Consumerist to say they won’t be charging the couple for the dish and that the disaster plan they have in place was not followed.
At least AT&T made an effort to douse the flames — this was a hot story today in the blogosphere. Paul Gillin noted it had over 600 Diggs and the video itself had been viewed over 11,000 times.
However, people commenting on the blog don’t believe AT&T had a disaster policy in the first place. What do you think?
October 30th, 2007 at 5:52 am
[...] This attracted the attention from the Consumerist blog, which was then run in Dianna Huff’s blog, aggregated on the Social Media Today site and then exploded onto hundreds of others. The fire’s aftermath and at&t’s response had generated a firestorm of its own – by Monday the original story had elicited more than 2000 diggs and nearly 300 comments on the social news website, digg.com. What had been a single phone conversation over a $300 piece of hardware had ballooned into a potential pr nightmare. [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 5:52 am
[...] This attracted the attention from the Consumerist blog, which was then run in Dianna Huff’s blog, aggregated on the Social Media Today site and then exploded onto hundreds of others. The fire’s aftermath and at&t’s response had generated a firestorm of its own – by Monday the original story had elicited more than 2000 diggs and nearly 300 comments on the social news website, digg.com. What had been a single phone conversation over a $300 piece of hardware had ballooned into a potential pr nightmare. [...]