That bill doesn’t look right
Texas police officer switched to AT&T FirstNet and got a horrible surprise.
Credit:
Getty Images | Bloomberg
An AT&T customer who switched to the company’s FirstNet service for first responders got quite the shock when his bill came in at $6,223.60, instead of the roughly $260 that his four-line plan previously cost each month.
The Texas man described his experience in a now-deleted Reddit post three days ago, saying he hadn’t been able to get the obviously incorrect bill reversed despite calling AT&T and going to an AT&T store in Dallas. The case drew plenty of attention and the bill was finally wiped out several days after the customer contacted the AT&T president’s office.
The customer said he received the billing email on December 11. An automatic payment was scheduled for December 15, but he canceled the autopay before the money was charged. The whole mess took a week to straighten out.
“I have been with AT&T for over a decade and I have always had unlimited plans so I knew this was a mistake,” he wrote. “The only change I have made to my account is last month I moved my line over to FirstNet. I am a first responder and I was told my price per month would actually go down a few dollars a month.”
“We have apologized for the inconvenience”
AT&T confirmed to Ars today that it “straightened out the customer’s bill.”
“We understand how frustrating this must have been for [the customer] and we have apologized for the inconvenience. We have resolved his concerns about his bill and are investigating to determine what caused this system error,” an AT&T spokesperson told Ars.
The customer posted screenshots of his bill, which helpfully pointed out, “Your bill increased $5,956.92” since the previous month. It included a $5.73 “discount for first responder appreciation,” but that wasn’t enough to wipe out a $6,194 line item listed as “Data Pay Per use 3,097MB at $2.00 per MB.”
Two dollars per megabyte is obviously a shockingly high price for mobile data and would make standard wireless service unobtainable for most people if it was routinely charged. AT&T does have an international travel rate of $2.05 per megabyte, and a $2-per-megabyte charge for domestic data that we found on a page describing certain business and government plans, but neither should have been applied to the Texas man’s bill. We asked AT&T for more detailed information on the $2 charge and why it was applied but only received the general statement.
We reached out to the customer, who used the Reddit name “Usual-Guava-8899.” The customer told us he is a police officer in Texas and prefers to remain anonymous. He confirmed that AT&T fixed the mistake by reducing his balance to $0 and giving him “a $205 credit for my troubles.”
The customer told Ars that he “was never told how or why” the $6,000-plus pay-per-use charge was applied. “The customer service over the phone and at the store level was pretty bad,” he told us. “They all seemed to have a pretty nonchalant attitude about it. I am definitely looking at moving carriers pretty soon.” Support from the AT&T president’s office was much better, but “it took almost a week for them to contact me,” he said.
“A huge amount of stress on me and my family”
The man’s Reddit post, which was made about four days into his billing nightmare, described the suboptimal customer service.
“Once I calmed down a bit I called AT&T customer service and spent over an hour on the phone with customer service,” he wrote. “The agents and supervisor I spoke with on the phone could not find the bill! I was told my bill was $205 even though I was logged into my account and could see my bill due was $6,223.60. After an hour on the phone I gave up and decided to go to a physical store in person the next day.”
At the corporate store in Dallas, an employee “was able to find my $6,223.60 bill immediately and he and the other employees were stunned at the amount due!” he wrote. “I still am not sure how the customer service agents and supervisor could not locate my bill when I called the night before. I was told when my account was migrated to FirstNet there was a mistake made by AT&T and for one day (11/25) I was accidentally put on a pay per use plan.”
That partially explains how the charge appeared, though it doesn’t give any indication of why. The store associate recommended that the customer contact the office of AT&T’s president.
“I can’t understand how this was not remedied immediately at the store level as this is an obvious error on AT&T’s end. This has caused a huge amount of stress on me and my family around the holidays,” he wrote. The customer wondered if he would be charged a late fee for not paying or have his service cut off, and asked people on Reddit for advice.
“I am left with so many worrisome questions,” he wrote. “What if AT&T does not fix this? How can this even happen to a customer? Shouldn’t there be some kind of red flags raised before this bill gets sent to a customer? How many people has this happened to? I am at a loss and very worried.”
Today, the customer was feeling greatly relieved. “I am so happy this has been fixed,” he told Ars. “It was a scary week.”
Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.
