‘It must be a mistake’: LA-area couple’s AT&T monthly landline bill jumps from $50 to $1,200
- Cheryl and Manuel Robles of Simi Valley, California recently received an AT&T landline bill for $1,200, 244 times what their typical bill costs
- The couple was reportedly told AT&T would no longer support landlines
- Thanks to advocates for the public service and NBC 4 Los Angeles, AT&T corrected the issue and reduced the couple’s bill back to their normal rate.
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 problem.
“It must be a mistake. It must be a mistake,’ Cheryl said NBC 4 in an interview.
The couple reached out to AT&T and were told there was no error.
‘They are no longer going to support landlines. Or they didn’t want to support landlines. And that’s why the price has gone up,” she said.
One woman who works for the California Public Utilities Commission said AT&T has tried to ditch land lines for about 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 per month
The landline bill came from their provider, AT&T
Cheryl and Manuel have operated 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’s pushing to move exclusively to a cellphone, Manuel has always wanted to keep it.
‘My husband wanted to keep a landline. He is very old fashioned. I wanted to switch to a mobile phone. And he didn’t want to go that way,” Cheryl said.
However, his insistence on maintaining the landline could have cost them in the end.
As part of their story, NBC reached out to AT&T, which did not respond to their questions.
The outlet asked if AT&T planned to withdraw landline services for customers in Southern California, but did not receive a response from the company.
After reaching out, AT&T eventually changed the price of Cheryl and Manuel’s account back to $50 a month.
They told the couple in a statement that the four-figure 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 this is what happens because we stayed at a landline. It’s time to switch to a cell phone,” Cheryl joked.
Robles along with the NBC 4 crew who helped get her account back to its normal rate of $50
According to Ann Marie Johnson with the Office of Public Counsel 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 raising rates to bump up landlines, but the carrier is trying to stop providing landline service to nearly 500,000.
The initiative is aimed at those in an area where there is no other provider.
AT&T even asked the PUC for permission to dump these land lines, which Johnson says she is fighting, mainly for safety reasons.
“Californians across the state rely on these phone lines to make sure they can call 911, get alerts,” Johnson told NBC 4.
“So these lines of communication are vital and a lifeline for many,” she continued.