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marine87's profile

Tutor

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3 Messages

Sunday, July 27th, 2014 7:53 PM

FRAUDULENT DATA OVERAGE CHARGES

I have been an AT&T customer since the Cingular Wireless merger and have almost always had some sort of data plan. Over the years as technology progressed and smart phones became the norm, the size of data plans also increased. I unfortunately didn't get the unlimited data plan when it was available and was never grandfathered into this fortunate group. I instead was left with the pick your plan group. I think once I got my first iPhone I was only using the 2 gb plan which was more than sufficient for almost all day everyday use. As time went on.. literally years... this plan was more than fine until I got my first overage charge- which was only the start. After several consecutive months of overage charges I decided to save my self the trouble and upgrade my plan to prevent more overage charges in the future. Once upgraded, my bill would be normal for a couple months and then before you know it.. BOOM overage charges once again. This has continued like this for the last 2 years at least. Anytime I would call to address this issue, the fault was of course was always mine according to the customer service. The idea of them fraudulently reporting my data was always in the back of my mind and today it was became more apparent then ever. My current setup consists of an iPad which I usually have tethered to my laptop and my iphone 5. My plan right now is a share plan that includes 10 gb for both devices.The first month I had the plan I was using my laptop tethered through my ipad at the beginning of my college semester, and was using it quite frequently. My bill came back and was just the way the customer service agent said it would be... Im now on month 3 of having this plan and this is the second consecutive month of at least three overage charges @ $15/gb.. coincidence? I think not. I was using my laptop this morning through the ipad (running a full internet browser) for 3 hours non stop. Left the house to get lunch and as soon as I walked into the restaurant I received a text alert saying that I used 75% of my third gb overage plan. Knowing how things go, and that I was bound to receive another overage charge I thought nothing of it. While sitting at the restaurant to waiting to receive my food, I checked my facebook once or twice, and that was it. Walked out side 30 minutes later and received another text alert saying I used 100% and was being charged another $15 for an additional gb of data. No surprise there. Two facebook visits = 0.25 gb Im sure... "I'll just check my account when I get home." Drove home and streamed 2 songs on my iphone. Once I got home I logged on here, checked my account and it said I already used 0.33 gb of my 1gb overage plan!!! Doing what? Streaming a couple songs and letting it sit idle in my pocket??? Thats completely ridiculous. Now I know without a doubt they are just sucking data out or just falsely reporting. I dont know how they record data usage but something tells me there is no one verifying their methods. Even gas pumps have people come out to verify that their pumps are calibrated and no one is getting ripped off. Is there any sort of verification system in place for Internet providers to prove they're recording data usage properly? And I dont mean a "self auditing" system, either. If you ask me their just ripping people off. I called today to try and address the issue.. once again, and the lady just kept making absurd excuses for why my phone might be using an enormous amount of data in such a short period of time. All she could tell me was that from the period from 9am-12pm (when I was using my laptop tethered to my ipad) I used 0.5 gb, which actually makes complete sense, considering I was using it non-stop for 3 hours. However, she could not give me a legitimate reason why my cell phone used 0.55 gb in less that 2 hours! In that time, like I said, checked facebook a few times and streamed 2 songs on my way home. In no way does that equate to more than half a gigabyte! Just a side note...She was convinced that streaming 2 songs was the reason!! Just to give you an understanding of how dumb that is...according to averages the amount of data used while streaming is 1mb per minute used. So lets say each of the songs I played were 5 mins long, that means 10 mins x 1mb/min = 10mb of data usage. Which is 0.01 GB not 0.55 GB... So according to my math, At&t is screwing people over left and right and no one can do anything about it because none of us can prove it. I guess we'll all keep paying up. What other choice do we have... oh wait!! That's right. I can leave. See you later At&t... thanks for nothing.

 

Sincerely,

 

Another faithful and disappointed At&t customer

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Master

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4.1K Messages

8 years ago

If you don't want to pay data overage fees, then switch to one of the new Mobile Share Advantage plans.  They no longer charge you for data overages, they just throttle your speeds way back once you reach your plan's limit.  The other option is to monitor your usage and restrict the high data usage apps from using your cellular data.

Guru

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294 Messages

10 years ago

The data usage reported is on a delay. Right now, ATT shows me as using 6,207 mb out of 10,000 mb. I know that's not the case though. So no, those 2 songs didn't cause you to go over. Your past history did, maybe from the day before or even longer. I'd suggest you download an app to your phone to help you keep track and compare.

Contributor

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1 Message

10 years ago

Our experience has been quite similar.  Our family has gone from one line with constant overages to almost all lines.  These overages have occured without changes in our actual usage patterns.  I've been sayng for the past month or so, that something feels very scammy.  It seems you've been fighting this battle for awhile.  Unfortunately, we cannot afford to wait it out.  We are leaving AT&T after many many years as loyal customers.  The really unfornate part is we gave our son an enormous amount of grief regarding his usage and eventually took away his phone.  Now, it seems maybe he was abusing his data usage as we thought. 

Scholar

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124 Messages

10 years ago

ujmnz is right, it is on a delay and you should download a data usage tracker instead of relying on the AT&T website. Also, since you use your iPad as a tether for your laptop, you're going to use data over time, depending on how long you browse the web or do other things that eat up data on your laptop over the month.

Tutor

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3 Messages

10 years ago

I have used third party data trackers and they told me that I am using less than what AT&T is reporting.. However, anytime I address this with them they always have an excuse as to why this might be.. Un-reported rollover from previous month, etc. No matter what, we as consumers have no way of proving them wrong. Take it or leave it I guess.

Sent from my iPhone

Contributor

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1 Message

10 years ago

Att is dishonest and they will deny deny deny!!!!! They are rich because of ys

Tutor

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11 Messages

10 years ago

Us too! $500 in overages since June but never before! Also the 160/mth plan is scammy. They don't inform you that if you upgrade your line each phone increases $25. Our $160 is now $260 plus overages! Insane!!!!! Something has to be done. I've been a member since Cingular. My brother was grandfathered with unlimited data, I was never offered that! Just trying to survive here. ATT isn't helping! Shady!!

Tutor

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11 Messages

10 years ago

Since I posted less than two

Tutor

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11 Messages

10 years ago

Since I posted less than an hour ago I received another $15 charge! What is happening here?

Tutor

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11 Messages

10 years ago

I spent over an hour with customer service. 1.) turn off cellular data
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