My usual bill just jumped up to double $398. Being charged for calls not made

[redmurthy]

So my usual bill which has remained steady at $155 or so for the last 27 months suddenly jumps up to more than twice to $398 for no apparent reason. I did travel overseas but never used the phone and billing history verifies that but I have now been charged $198 for one call that I made with a calling card and not through the at&t line itself. This is clearly an error and I am trying this out before I discontinue the line. I have been out of contract for a while and while I have heard of at&t billing nightmares I never realized that I will be suffering from this myself. Who needs to be contacted and how is this going to be handled. If there is no solution I will drop this family plan and move on.

[wingrider01 ACE - Geek]

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redmurthy wrote:

So my usual bill which has remained steady at $155 or so for the last 27 months suddenly jumps up to more than twice to $398 for no apparent reason. I did travel overseas but never used the phone and billing history verifies that but I have now been charged $198 for one call that I made with a calling card and not through the at&t line itself. This is clearly an error and I am trying this out before I discontinue the line. I have been out of contract for a while and while I have heard of at&t billing nightmares I never realized that I will be suffering from this myself. Who needs to be contacted and how is this going to be handled. If there is no solution I will drop this family plan and move on.

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call customer support would be the first suggestion. 1-800-331-0500 I believe is the number

By any chance for the calling card - did you dial a 1-800 number to access the calling card?

[redmurthy]

yes of course, even billed by the calling card for the same time so this has to be a mistake

[savior]

just to reconfirm what your saying:

you used a calling card WHILE Roaming Outside USA...... well you may not be charged for the international long distance call but you would be charged for dialing  while roaming

[aristizzle]

If you were overseas and you used your phone to dial out with a calling card, it is valid usage. You used your phone overseas which is considered roaming and you were billed the roaming fee per minute for whatever country you were in. Maybe it would have helped if you contacted AT&T to ask them these questions before traveling. 

Good luck!

[redmurthy]

Just to clarify, this call is listed as made from the USA as if I dialed without a calling card at all. I have no overseas usage at all since I kept the phone off the whole time when I was overseas.

[redmurthy]

To add more context I did travel overseas but I have no roaming charges, this call lists before my travel overseas and is on a date when I was sitting at home.

[BadBadLeroyBrown ACE - Warrior]

Did you make ANY calls at all, even with the assistance of a calling card, from your cell phone? Or was your phone in Airplane Mode the entire time you were out of the country?

[imstef]

If you were in the US and used a calling card, dialed the 800 number and the dialed your international number, if you accidentally hit the send key again after dialing the international number, that could cause the call to be placed on att's network and not through the calling card. It actually happens more than you world think. We are all used to hitting send after dialing a number. Now if you used a calling card from your cell phone while outside the US, then that's roaming regardless and would be billed as such.

[redmurthy]

No calls were made from outside the US period. The call was made and billed on a date where I had not even left the country. I have been charged by the calling card company for its clearly nominal amount for the call for the exact same time and date as indicated on my bill. So the only solution I can think of is that I dialed the calling card and after that something happened that left me paying the bill via at&t and via the calling card.

Even if what you say happened, $198 for one 55 minute call should never happen unless I was dialing the international space station. This only reaffirms my plan to ditch at&t and I will contact my organizations HR (its a business group plan) to get rid of it and move to another provider. For reference I have heard this happen to three other team members but never thought for a second about it. Now that I see it happen for myself and the amount of at&t billing errors on the forum someone needs to take this seriously enough to stop this sort of overcharging happening and ripping customers off.

[wingrider01 ACE - Geek]

where you down near the mexician border or up near the candian border? It is possible that the tower strength on a mexician or candadian tower was higher then a US tower and it switched to their towers since the carriers have a reciprocal agreement

that cost for a 55 minute call on international roaming is well within the realm of possiblity all carriers rates for this are very  high

[BadBadLeroyBrown ACE - Warrior]

Well, without seeing the exact line item of the call, international dialing to certain countries can easily run $2.50+/minute. That's not just AT&T gouging its customers for profit's sake, as most of those charges are simply passthrough from the wireless carrier in the destination country you're calling.

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redmurthy wrote:

No calls were made from outside the US period. The call was made and billed on a date where I had not even left the country. I have been charged by the calling card company for its clearly nominal amount for the call for the exact same time and date as indicated on my bill. So the only solution I can think of is that I dialed the calling card and after that something happened that left me paying the bill via at&t and via the calling card.

Even if what you say happened, $198 for one 55 minute call should never happen unless I was dialing the international space station. This only reaffirms my plan to ditch at&t and I will contact my organizations HR (its a business group plan) to get rid of it and move to another provider. For reference I have heard this happen to three other team members but never thought for a second about it. Now that I see it happen for myself and the amount of at&t billing errors on the forum someone needs to take this seriously enough to stop this sort of overcharging happening and ripping customers off.

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[aristizzle]

Without a international feature to discount your per minute rate of course its going to be expensive. That's with any carrier.