Cingular Wireless
AT&T; Wireless customers, one of whom is me, were switched over to Cingular a few months ago following the merger. My new carrier has a trick to either get people to pay their bills earlier, or charge them hard-to-dispute penalties for unintentionally paying a few days late.
Nowhere on the bill does it give a date when the bill is due. Instead, in the “Date Due” field it says “UPON RECEIPT.” In the itemized portion of the bill it says a “late fee may be applied for amounts unpaid 22 days after the date the invoice was mailed.” But there’s no indication when the invoice was mailed. There is no postmark. There is a “Date of Invoice,” but that could be before or after the mailing date – indeed, on my latest bill the itemized charges stopped three days before the date of invoice, so they could very well have mailed it with a post-dated invoice.
Since it’s impossible to tell with certainty when this 22-day period begins or ends, most people will simply pay the bill right away rather than risk being late. And if they are charged a late fee, it’ll be hard to determine whether it was justified.
Evil, inconvenient, and lame.
I hear some readers saying that the due date is “right away,” and that I have no right to demand a grace period. The most concise answer I can come up with to that position is “WRONG.” A slightly less pithy response is that this is a contract, and both parties should be able to know the exact terms of the contract.