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Can't access emergency Covid19 data

AT&T posted on the account page and elsewhere on AT&T pages that prepaid accounts signed up with autopay would get an additional 10 gigabytes of data. Well, I merrily streamed my way through a whole of online videos based on that and found out the "bonus" data exppired 13 days before my plan renews.

ALL of your regular data has to be used before accessing that oh-so-magnanimous "bonus" data. What this means is that you'll be stranded a little over halfway into the month with nothing but the super slow backup data speed.

So that so-generous extra data for this worldwide emergency can't be used! Nice going AT&T.

Based on the bogus "bonus" data promotion, I'd merrily streamed my way through much more online video than I normally would and found myself stranded more than 10 days before the renewal date.

Now I find that ATT&T withdrew the autopayment a day early but pushed the data renewal out another day (so far - who knows what else they're going to pull?). No way to contact them or hold them accountable: no email address for the company, no text messaging and as soon this problem happened, their telephone customer service switched from the one first call I had with a pleasant, very knowlegable person with no accent whatsoever, to someone with an impenetrable accent that could not be understood, especially in combination with the suddenly very bad phone connection.

I've already researched what happens if AT&T duplicates my experience with other telecoms and refuses to cancel autopay once I find another company, so I think I'm okay there. I'm just very very disappointed that this company seems to be like all the other too-big-to-be-honest telecoms.

Responses

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

formerlyknownas

ACE - Sage

•

105.5K Messages

3 years ago

Auto pay, and every other Prepaid option, it SELF MANAGED. If you want to turn off auto-pay you just login to your pay go online account and turn the switch to off. You can't miss it.

Porting your number out cancels service.
If you do neither of those things, of course auto pay continues and it's your fault, not the carrier you left without canceling service.

The information on the bonus 10 gigs of bonus data, was that the first 10 gigs would be delivered on March 27rd, and second 10 gigs on April 25 and 26th.

BTW, this screen shot is from the at&t prepaid page. very easy to find from there.

(edited)

3

Sara_Bee

Employee

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114 Messages

And to add... When your auto-pay reneweal is charged, it is purposely charged a day early and sits on your account as available funds to draw from until the rate plan is set to renew at midnight the day it expires. At midnight it draws from the funds. So you see the charge come out of your bank the day before it is set to renew. That is why you see a charge but your data speed is still slow. It hasn't started the new 30 days yet.

*I am an AT&T employee, and the postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent AT&T's position, strategies or opinions.

Like

3 years ago

S

StrandedByBogusBonus

New Member

•

3 Messages

Solution accepted by whom?

This AT&T employee's response is essentially "Eh, it's how we do things, deal with it". To explain that a person has money taken out of their bank for a service that isn't delivered until two days later is not a solution. It is just a company employee repeating their employer's policy.

With added insults. There are the CAPS. Then there is the explaining easily understood language, as though the problem were a customer's inability to understand plain language. And of course, there was no actual solution offered to the problem, which was the fact that the bogus bonus data expired halfway through the month but could not be used until after all the paid for data had been exhausted.

The other telco that refused to cancel of course had cancellation policies in print as well. It simply ignored them when I attempted to cancel the account. They did not state in advance they were going to do this. I did not expect AT&T to state this either. If there are going to be problems cancelling the account, those will happen when I make the attempt.

The employee also does not address AT&T intentionally making it difficult to contact anyone in person. This blog is not a substitute for customer service. Nor is insulting a customer in lieu of offering a a solution.

(edited)

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3 years ago

0

formerlyknownas

ACE - Sage

•

105.5K Messages

No one insulted you. Any slights are imagined on your part.

1. Two responses, one is from an employee, one is not.
2. Your first post demonstrated no knowledge of how 'auto pay', EFTs, refills or how to cancel prepaid works.
3. The dates for when bonus data was given were published. If you didn't receive bonus data per that schedule, you should have called AT&T. Unless you used up both base plan and bonus data, I cannot understand how you had no data. You poorly describe being out of data with 10 days to go, but no facts or dates, no mention of calling AT&T. (but manage to make a profile and complain here)
4. As a prepaid user, you must call 611 from your phone to reach support. (universal). Staff is reduced and more people are calling, so wait times are long.
5. The Community is peer to peer information and advice, not customer service.

🐾 I don’t work for AT&T or any carrier. Never have, never will. My replies are based on experience and reading content available on the website. If you posted personal information, please edit and remove.

Award for Community Excellence 2021 Achiever*
*I am not an AT&T employee, and the views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

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3 years ago

0

StrandedByBogusBonus

Can't access emergency Covid19 data

formerlyknownas

Sara_Bee

StrandedByBogusBonus

formerlyknownas

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