Why are Data Limits within Smart limits being retired?

Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.

Customer support is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product.

Customer service may be provided by a person, or by automated means. Examples of automated means are Internet sites, automated service such as data limits. An advantage with automated means is an increased ability to provide service 24-hours a day, which can, at least, be a complement to customer service by persons.

Were you thinking of the customer when you decided to retire the Data Limits within Smart Limits? Or was this another executive and middle management level decision, by those who are so far removed from their customer base that they cannot connect the dots between the bottom line and customer service.

Were you thinking of the customer when you removed an automated service, and replaced it with a manual process? You placed the burden on your customers.

When the decision was made to replace the automated service with a manual process, did you consider the ramifications you have placed on your customers?

Did you think this decision was in the best interest of your customer? or the corporation?

T-Mobil provides this service for free, Verizon provides this service for $5.00 for all phones on the account, I bet there are other competitors who continue to provide this service to their customers.

Thanks for the reply. So turning off data is ATTs 'solution'? Ridiculous. Fortunately I only have to buy out half my accounts to bail on you guys after this dishonesty.

Define 'soon'. So last night my kid was at a friends house and didn't connect to their wifi and sucked down a ton of data. I used to not have to worry about this. Now I get a notice that my friendly ATT service has charged me $15 for more data. Please explain to me how this is better for any of us besides ATT's billing?

Promised services ring hollow. Canned replies are getting old. Is ATT even listening? Is it a bot that replies with the same useless information?

Hard to see why we need to stay with this decietful company.

So the choice is that they lie or they are lied to.  Either way, this is ATT's way to increase revinues, of course, in one of the sleaziest ways possible. Go ATT 😞

The alternative solution is moronic at best.  Sure, just turn off data.  Oh yeah, you need to monitor the usage to know when this is necessary.  I only went with this plan because of the smart limits plan.  Gee, I wonder if this means I can cancel my contract without ETF since they changed the deal.

So we switched from AT&T to T-Mobile in January after having been AT&T customers for over 10 years.  Prior to moving to T-Mobile, our kids did not have smart phones, but we got them iPhones when we moved.  However, the coverage with T-Mobile in our area is very inconsistent so we paid off the phones and decided to move back to AT&T, which along with Verizon, has the best consistent coverage in our area.  We thought you could actually split the 10 GB of shared data among the phone lines (as you can with T-Mobile), but no, it really is shared, but we were assured by the sales guy that there was a service you could add for $5 a month that would allow you to set limits via an app.  He didn't mention that it was $5 PER LINE nor did he mention the fact that DATA LIMITS ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE ON THE SMART LIMITS SERVICE!  We would never have gone back regardless of inconsistent coverage.  Imagine our surprise and frustration after spending 4 HOURS at the AT&T store to switch back just to find that we were misinformed.  Needless to say, we are extremely unhappy and even though we literally just moved back to AT&T last night, we are going back to T-Mobile today even though coverage is not alway stellar in our area.  At least we can make sure we don't have any unexpected data overage costs.  (And I agree with other posters that kids need to know how to manage their data or they can face consequences - I just think AT&T needs to offer parents a more reasonable method for monitoring the data usage so as not to have data costs run amok.)  I shouldn't have to monitor data usage daily.  Obviously AT&T is once again too big and does not really care about the customer.  There are other carriers who at least seem to understand what customers want and are trying to retain customers and so they will get my business.  

I would switch to Verizon (and save a little money by doing so over AT&T) because they have good coverage here, but the phones we have are not compatible with their network and I would have to buy new phones and I don't want to do that.

Oh well, at least I will save about $40/month by going back to T-Mobile.  

If everyone who is unhappy with the changes that AT&T has implemented would switch carriers and dump AT&T, they might actually start to care about providing services that customers want.  People can complain all they want, but until they demonstrate their displeasure with their pocketbooks, companies are not likely to change.

Check out Cricket Wireless. Yes, they are owned by AT&T, so you will be able to use your AT&T phones on their service. But as a no-contract provider, they offer very competitive pricing for unlimited talk/text, and "limited" data.

The cool thing is you can buy a line with say, 3GB of data and give that to your teenager. When they run out, they get still get data - but throttled from LTE speed (8mb) to a slower speed (128kb). So, they still have data access, can do iMessage, surf websites, check e-mails, social media, etc... even stream Pandora at a lower speed. They won't be able to Facetime, and streaming video will be very slow. 

But the key is... YOU WON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR THE DATA OVERAGE!

Pretty good deals there, for individual lines, as well as a "group save" deal that gets you 5 lines for $100, with 1GB of LTE data per line (NOT SHARED between the lines).

No, I haven't switched to it yet, but thinking this is a "solution" to a lot or people's issues who have complained about the AT&T Smart Limits change. 

Yes, this sort of keeps the business with AT&T, as they own Cricket, and yes - Cricket's offerings can change without notice. But if you don't like Cricket for some reason, you're only out 1 month of fee, and are not locked in, you can always move to T-Mobile or some other MVNO that supports GSM phones.

Hope this helps?

I would have turn the data on the phone off after the first time.

Now I am using a data monitor on android.  It tells the kids and texts me there close to there limit.  I just go in and shut off there data.