What’s been your most expensive monthly phone bill? $150? $300? I once ran up a $600+ bill while at uni, and my parents sure weren’t happy. But now even my excesses are plunged into the shade, with AT&T’s charge of an astounding $3000 for Dave Stolt.
Dave made the mistake of believing AT&T’s roaming data charges were reasonable. I’ll let him tell you the full story himself:
“I have a caveat emptor to top them all. I purchased an iPhone on opening day to use in lieu of a cumbersome laptop while traveling in Ireland and England for two weeks in early July. AT&T promises “easy, affordable, and convenient plans” in their advertising… turns out I got two out of three.
On the way to the airport, I activated the per-use international roaming data plan – the only one offered to me. The rep quoted me $.005 per KB but did not disclose what that would translate to in layman’s language (i.e., X amount per e-mail, X amount per web page, etc.). I’m a web developer as part of my career and I couldn’t even tell you how many KB the average web page is, no less a text message to my son, an e-mail with a photo to my mother, or a quick check of Google Maps. That’s part one of the trap. However, I now pay $40 per month for unlimited data usage on the iPhone, so really — how much could it be? $100 at the most, right?
Keep reading.
As we know, the iPhone can’t be unlocked to use a European provider’s SIM card for more reasonable rates while traveling. There’s part two of the trap.
To be safe, I went online to My Account at AT&T a couple days into the trip and again a week later and was told “usage data is currently unavailable”… and that’s part three. I had no way of knowing specific usage data until I received my bill over the last weekend.
A bill for $3000.
Two weeks of travel with sporadic AT&T EDGE network usage off and on mixed with wifi when available… $3000.
Doing some research, I learned this morning that AT&T offers unlimited international data usage at $70 per month to its Blackberry customers.
Here’s my bottom line: I want this same usage plan to be made available to iPhone customers and to be applied retroactively to my account.
Billing phone reps offered me a $400 “courtesy credit” on the $3000 charge if I would agree to sign up for a $300 per year international data plan with a max of 20MB per month. (I’m not planning any international travel for a while anyway, but 20MB would be burned in a day or two of average use – they must be kidding.) I have until August 14th to resolve this or all my family’s phones (including my wife’s business line) get disconnected. Obviously, there’s no way I can pay $3000 for something so egregiously wrong.
I’m writing you in the hope that the exposure of my story might force AT&T’s hand in admitting they have an inadequate solution in place for international iPhone users, that they’ve discriminated against the iPhone in favor of the Blackberry, that they failed to adequately disclose the exorbitant nature of their rate plan, that they kept me in the dark about my usage specifics until it was too late to modify them, and that by disallowing unlocking to use a European provider’s SIM with more reasonable rates, I was trapped without knowing it until that $3000 “gotcha” came knocking at my door.
Thanks for your time, and please do not hesitate to contact me ([email protected]) with any further questions.”
How many levels of ouch does that score on! While I’ve no doubt AT&T will play the “data usage is your responsibility” card, allowing a customer to rack up that level of fees for what, less than 600MB of data transfered, seems pretty poor practice.
Our sister site SlashGear is promising to keep in contact with Dave and see how things pan out, so we’ll keep you updated.
He should check an article over at the Consumerist.com covering a similar topic. I don’t think they are charging him correctly. Remember, that $.005 is equal to 1/2 a penny per KB. At that rate he would have needed to download 600,000KB (just for reference, my last month bill with very heavy data usage was just under 40,000KB).
The problem is that AT&T doesn’t know how to do math.
UPDATE: AT&T finally waived the charges due to miscommunication. Dave sent me the data usage, it’s around 142MB i think
Usage is pretty easy to find on the phone. I would also say that any web developer should have a decent grasp. I’m a system administrator and web developer who uses his iphone several hours a day and gets dozens of emails a day and have only done 106M of useage (on edge) in the little over a month I’ve had mine.
can you clarify what the ‘miscommunication’ was that dave alludes to in the update? was at&t saying they incorrectly billed him at 3000? or that, while they were right to bill him, they are waiving it because they didn’t communicate accurately what the charges would be.
i also think that this reader should contact his local state’s attorney’s office. i’ve had problems with cellphone companies jerking me & my family around in the past. simply write a letter outlining the problem (like this gentleman has already done) and then be sure to send it to a few big wigs at AT&T, and make sure you put a CC: line on the actual printed letter and include your state’s attorney’s office. then send the letter to them (you might want to contact your own lawyer too).
we had a problem with U.S. Cellular cancelling my families plan when we switched to AT&T and the state’s attorney’s office for Illinois, Lisa Madigan, was able to help put the pressure on U.S. Cellular to give us a full-refund.
I highly recomend dropping the old “lawyer” bomb whenever dealing with egregious problems like this. Any court in the world will ALWAYS side with the consumer on an issue like this because, we’re the little guy, and AT&T is a giant company and “should have known better”.
I am leaving to europe tomorrow and just called att. they qouted me 2 cent per KB! where did you find it for .005 cents! there plans for international are terrible. its $2 a min for greece! good thing i bought an unlocked phone to buy prepaid sim cards!
Although I would agree that the charge rate for data transfer seems a bit high, I have absolutely no sympathy for the guy.
First of all, any decent web developer SHOULD know how much data transfer is involved in an average web page, text message, email, or graphic image. Why should a professional web developer need to have KB explained to him in layman’s terms? Unfortunately far too many web developers today do not know simple web basics.
Secondly, any fool who agrees to a pay for anything based upon some measurement that he does not understand deserves whatever he gets. Would you pay £79.00 for an iPod nano without first finding out the conversion rate of pounds to dollars? Or would you just assume that it must be about the same as the $79.00 that you would pay in the US?
[quote comment="6513"] Would you pay £79.00 for an iPod nano without first finding out the conversion rate of pounds to dollars?[/quote]
Ooops, I meant to say iPod shuffle.
Shame on you Apple and ATT ! Come on let’s admit how many of you know that an average web page would cost you $3.00 to look at and an average Iphone picture would cost about the same to send ? In effect, that means that both the email function and the Internet surfing function is not feasible while travelling for anybody who is not a milionaire. None of it has been made clear in the Iphone advertising. SHAME !!!!
I just got home from europe as well. My bill comes soon this month. I have the slight feeling from my calculations that my bill will also be along the line of $2000. I have not the slightest idea of what to do. As i, nor my father, can pay for that.
when i checked at the att store they said i wouldnt even be able to access edge network. and when i did i looked up the pricing and saw the .005 (half a cent) a kB. and now there saying .02 (2 cents??). I dont know what to do. There’s no way i even used as much as i thought. Loading a site ended up being almost 1 to 5 mB!?!?!
Believe me its the truth, I spent 5 days in the middle of the woods, only to check email 2x a day. I ended up with a 3,000 dollar bill. They refuse to adjust the bill I am going to get a lawyer because this is highway robbery. Any recommendations on anyone taking up the case?