Billing Scam?

I set my account with auto pay through my checking account... For some reason, it did not get through. And cingular stop charging my checking account. Instead, they rolled my balance up to 6 months and give me a balance of $960. Then hey sent it to collection agency!!
Can they do that??? Roll my account balance for 6 months instead of cutting my service?

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When they didn't charge your account, don't you think you should have contacted them before 6 months?
You have a contract. You have to pay.

Yes they can do that, and it's not a scam if you can't be bothered with checking your checking account balance to make sure there is always enough money in it to pay any automatic bills, and because you don't check your bank account and it gets low just once, (depending on the company), the autopayment(s) can stop the first time they can't go through. Normally they will make two attempts to send the charge through. On the second attempt they turn the automatic payments off and will just wait for you to send in your payment (which you know you owe).

In this case, the balance you owe will just roll over to the next month, and the next month etc.... etc.

The cellular phone company assumes anyone that makes automatic payments from their checking accounts will not overdraw their account to the point that automatic payment don't go through and auto cancel.

They also assume that people paying by credit cards, will always have available credit to allow the charges to go through.


Moral of this story is...

Time to start checking your bills and payments every single month.

Use a T Mobile

Originally Posted by jaconda

Use a T Mobile

Heheh only problem with that is, the people that never check their bills, won't check them no matter where they have cell phone service. And the real problem was not checking the checking account balance!

yep, just because it's automatic payment doesn't mean all responsibility is on cingular. you are in a contract, you need to pay. it's always important to keep track of things yourself and not rely on other people.