AT&T Debacle
My wife and I travel frequently and consider ourselves somewhat Tech savvy. Internet communications have become a necessity for us as well as a major expense. Much of our current lifestyle is based on them and their costs have risen steadily in our expenditures. Our monthly electronic communications bills run in excess of $400 if you include satellite as well as internet and phone connections. The communications giants get more than a few of our hard earned dollars. They have extolled how much they have reduced our costs in recent years. However the big two, Verizon and AT&T, still earn as much as 50% on their invested dollars. Only Apple has a better rate of return.
Our December bill is a prime example of one reason for this. Our "provider" is AT&T. We were going to be away for the month of December so it seemed a good idea to reduce our "data" portion of our wireless communications bill. Accordingly we called AT&T and asked to have the monthly amount reduced to 2 gigabytes, and also at the same time added an unlimited international texting/with photos plan as we were going to be out of the country for the month, and increase of some $30 plus dollars. (Note that their "month" is 28 days, not 30.) Thus we went off on a long, well planned (we thought) vacation. The trouble began as soon as we arrived in Australia. My phone was using "roaming data" when it wasn't supposed to. Surprise, there was NO international help for AT&T customers. And the online "help" consumed even more of the very limited and expensive data. The only help was a collect call back to the states. We were on our own.
Today's smart phones are extremely complex with various menus going down as many a 4 or 5 sub-menus. And often they involve more than one menu screen. After much agonizing, I finally "locked" down the phone and carefully monitored usage after that. We theoretically stayed within our "phone budget". On our return however, we were greatly upset to discover that our supposedly reduced bill had nearly doubled to nearly $300. Over an hour later, and up to the supervisor level, we discovered some of the unmentioned intricacies our AT&T plan. (Verizon is not much different). It seems that the "prorated" domestic data had resulted in $41 in additional data charges despite the fact that we had gone from 10 gigs to 2 gigs, and all the while we had used none of it. It appears that the only way to avoid this double billing is to make changes on the monthly anniversary date. To add insult to injury, (for domestic users you can stop reading) it seems that while we had unlimited international texting, this applied only to messages we SENT, NOT to those we received. The latter were .$50 each even if they contained just an smiley face. And they also failed to mention that any photos attached to the texts came out of the limited data pool and were not "unlimited". The last wrinkle (translate as omission) was the category of "maritime texting". When you are in international waters, AT&T uses this type of charge to extract additional revenue. Apparently "unlimited" texting does not include "maritime" texting, and yes this charge applies to both to received and sent texts.
To say the least, I was incensed. All these "technicalities", exceptions that were buried in small print really irritated me. I wonder if the hour plus I spent with billing was worth it. I imagine most people just pay the bill. However, this rant is an attempt to 1. Make other aware of the type of billing practices of the industry, and AT&T in particular and 2. hope that others save their money by not making the same mistakes we did.
On a more practical level, how do you avoid these charges when traveling? Smart phones are a way of life for many of us, and it's not just smart phones that incur these charges. For those of you who have "feature" phones the basics are the same.
I would suggest:
1. Go to your providers showroom and have one of the persons there configure your particular phone (there are more types and versions than can be easily counted) for the area you are going to before you leave and according to the plan you have.
1. When out of your home area , (particularly outside the United States) turn off the phone (power it down) and just use the wifi portion when available.
3. Note, that it is the "tower" you connect to that determines the charges. You can be in the US and still be using Canadian or Mexican towers when you are near the borders. The same goes for ships in American ports (Alaska, California, Florida etc). You can be on land and still be attached to the cruise ship. Ouch.
4. Treat what the "help" folks tell you skeptically, as it was what they didn't tell us that caused our issues.
5. Consider buying a cheap ($30>$40) pay as you go phone that has a removable sim card that can be moved from country to country for those occasions when a phone is essential.
Happy Camping
Bill
2K8 Chevy LTZ Turbo Diesel 4x4
Cats Vino, and "Stubby"
Transfer Flow Tank
2017 Fox Mountain 235RLS
Reese 16K Slider
Honda EU2000's to power the toys
Garmin GPS's/Android Pixel 2XL -WAZE
"And were still wandering..."
