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No bill since january 2012

2K views 11 replies 9 participants last post by  P Smith 
#1 ·
I have had a combined bill with AT & T for telephone, DSL internet and Dish network for the past 4 years. As of February 2012 my
AT&T bill does not include Dish Network services and I have not received a bill from Dish since January 2012.
Am I liable for their failure to bill me since Feb.? I have called 2 or 3 times and they say they will take care of it. Still no bill. Please advise
 
#2 ·
I would say that whatever time period elapses between bills must be their billing period for you. And as such, they should allot that same amount of time for you to pay. They cannot expect you to pay the entire amount when they finally do send you an invoice.
 
#4 ·
It's a murky issue... because on the one hand it behooves them to send a bill.. but if you've been watching TV all this time, you obviously know they are providing service... and should know about what your bill ought to be based on previous ones.

Arguably too, since you haven't paid a bill for several months you should have that money available to spend whenever they do get around to billing you... so I see no reason why they couldn't expect you to pay the whole bill at once whenever they get the system fixed and start properly billing.
 
#5 ·
Local to me, there was a guy a county over that had cable installed. He had DVRs and everything. They never billed him.

He went in to get one of his failed DVRs replaced and things went bad for him. He was charged with theft of service.

He had to pay the 5 years of service and a very steep penalty plus interest but he didn't get jail time from what I remember.

Your local laws may vary, and 4 months is nothing, but I wouldn't let it go on too long if I were you.
 
#6 ·
Yeah, that's the point I was getting at. You sign up for service, you're not wrong to use the service... but if they screw up and don't bill you, it doesn't mean its a free ride... and I know how most of us budget... having the money for the monthly bill is hard... so if you get used to not paying it and aren't saving that money... it will be a rude awakening when they finally catch up.

Or worse... they might just up and disconnect you for non-payment one day (even if it is their fault for not billing) and then you have to go through that hassle.
 
#7 ·
I hope you documented when you made those calls. They will catch up with you someday and demand payment. As someone said, you should be putting that money aside. The problem appears to be from the AT&T handoff to DISH. Work with the DIRT rep and I think you'll get this resolved with only the past due amount to be paid. Just make sure they never put it on our record as late pay so your credit report isn't affected.
 
#8 ·
When your bundled you still have a dish account that they use to track your monthly bill and credits/debits that they send over to AT&T, I forgot the prefix numbers but it should have started with something like 8277 or something of that sort.

When the account got unbundled Dish had to make a "new" account for you with the proper account prefix (should be 8255) that they would be using to Bill you and track the normal charges from now on.

What I assume happened is in the unbundle process the new account was set to paperless billing and theres probably been some sort of credit applied to the account during the transfer to keep it from being disconnected these last few months.
Bear in mind this scenario is an assumption and is just based on cases I've seen whilst working at Dish.

Just because you're not receiving a bill does not mean you are not being charged for the service and trust me when I say that when those charges do surface the CSR will say exactly that.
And then go on to say you could have checked online, via phone, ect. Ignoring the fact that you probably dont/didnt know your new account number lol.

None the less the unbundle process for Dish and Telcos is a pain in the ass at times, sometimes it goes over smoothly sometimes it doesnt.
From what I recall it can take up to 2-3 billing cycles for the charges to reflect properly or show up at all with the first true Dish bill reflecting all the necessary prorated charges applicable.

So as said earlier be prepared for a bill, and a big one at that.
 
#11 ·
I got a bill yesterday for the period of mid June thru Mid July. Along with it was a welcome letter which sounded like I just signed up. Anyway, I'll see what happens down the road. of course, I will pay this bill I just received for one month and wait till the other shoe drops.
 
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