Re: Beware: known AT&T data overage charges problem

How do you know how much you have used?

14 GBS is an unusually small amount for home internet.  

What devices are connecting to your wifi?

Don't know if this would actually help you, but at least, it is another avenue to explore.. you can send a private message to the care team and see if they can help.

Pick one of there care team links (any will work) and send a message with your name, account, phone, contact email, best time to connect with you, and a message with your needs. Give them a couple days or so to get back with you, and I hope they can help.

U-verse problems, ATTU-verseCare.
Cellular Problems, ATTMobilityCare.
Billing/other problems ATTCustomerCare
Please mark replies as solutions if it fixed your problem. This helps other members find answers quickly.

Good luck

Your not the only one having this issue. We have never gone over our limit then bam about 6 months ago we started getting overage charges. We are constantly monitoring our usage. No one can tell us how much we've gone over and so on. All we get is the runaround. It's become such an issue that we are currently searching to switch providers. We have even cut back our usage and stay way under our 150 GB cap.Something must be messed up with how they read our data. data caps are so wrong in so many ways. Just another way for big companies to control their customers

     We too have been paying ATT DSL overage charges since August 2015.... before the overage charges began, our bill ran roughly, $65 per month for 6gps.... then all of a sudden, I was billed $170+ (dont recall the exact amount) for one month!! Similar charges have occurred every month since including our last bill dated for December totalling $165.00!!! 

     When this first began, in August, I called the ATT billing department of course, was reconnected numerous times, explained our problem, but was finally told we were going over our alotted 150 gb per month cap (****)... Funny part about that is, our household, as a whole, uses less internet/wifi than ever before. I could not get anyone at ATT to tell me why this was happening. I hung up with them, went to the FCC website and filed a complaint against ATT (this was in late August 2015).... I was contacted promptly, via email, by the FCC....then was contacted by a 'higher-up' rep from ATT who proceeded to try to convince me that someone must be leeching our internet connection which is not possible since we live away from any main roads, in an extremely rural area of eastern kentucky, have no neighbors, and besides, our wifi connection is password protected. I told the rep this, but he still blamed the overages on that and told me that the only way to monitor our internet usage was to opt for a third party router, at our cost... other than that, there was nothing he could do... he did not even offer to help with the problem to be honest.

     I have researched ATT overage charges in DSL and in their wireless data as well and discovered that ATT have been found guilty of a practice known as "throttling"... For those who are unfamiliar.... Throttling is the practice of slowing data speeds for the sole purpose of causing the customer to use an increased amount of data so overages occur, and overage charges can be implemented on the customers bill.... This leads me to believe that if ATT can throttle wireless data connection speeds, they must be capable of throttling DSL internet connection speeds....

     [Per Guidelines:  Keep it Relevant and Appropriate].

Just keeping details streight, the throttoling they were penalized for was due to usage with mobile (cell) phones, and has nothing to do with legacy DSL internet usage.

Still, I agree with you, they ARE bad about padding data usage, and refuse to share the method they use to compute that usage.

So annoying trying to prove a negative. As in, you can prove what you DID do, but no way you can prove something that you did not do, because, lacking evidence, you can't prove it.

If you have a wi=fi routher, you can log into it, and look at the logins under the security section logs, and if there are devices and logins you don't own, then someone could be leaching your signal. I know.. unlikly.. but just to satisfy yourself, it would not hurt  to check it anyways, just to be sure.

I have heard of cases where folks hooked up an extra line in the phone box, but again, given the conditions where you live, yes, that would be very unlikly.

In the general scheme of things, I am not sure how it would profit them to deliberatly run up folks data costs, as they just would not make enough extra profit to make the practice profitable, and it is too easy to catch them, and put a stop to it.

(Then again, I have heard of cases of comcast charging folks extra for going over their data limit, and the customers were not even in the us, so no one was using anything. In that case, the wires were crossed, and being charged for a neibors usage.)

My condolences, and hope this gets resolved to your satisfaction.

I have very similar concerns regarding my DSL usage.  I have no problem admitting that I have gone over the usage cap and I understand that there are fees, $10 per 50GB overage.  The issue(s) I have are the following:

1. No prior month usage reporting.  I can monitor usage (roughly 2 days behind) for the current month but, once the calendar flips to the next month, there is nothing for the current month (of course) and the prior month is gone.  On the reports screen I can see up to the prior month in total monthly usage, but not the month immediately prior.  It takes weeks for that to show up, well after the bill is generated.

2. The amount I am being billed for overages is incorrect.  I monitored my Dec. 2015 usage very closely, trying to stay under the cap.  I received a 90% usage email two days before the end of the month.  The first day of January, I received an overage email so I knew then that I had gone over the cap, but not how much (see #1 above).  When the bill appeared, i was charged $20 in service charges, equivalent to over 50GB in overages!  In two days!!  Finally, towards the end of January I looked at the reports and saw I used 5DG over.  So why the $20 overage???

3. When I call AT&T I get very nice CSRs who are happy to credit my account, sometimes more than I request, but all they want to do is get me off the phone, not fix the issues.  This means I keep calling every month because there is excess charges of at least $10 every month. 

While I don't like the caps and think they should be higher, I don't have much choice where I live so I can't just drop AT&T no matter how much I'd like to.  LTE doesn't even work too well where I live and that or satellite are way more expensive for less data overall anyway.

Anyone have suggestions on who I can reach at AT&T to 'permanently' solve this issue to where I don't have to call every month for service charge adjustments?

It's nice to realize I'm not the only victim of this scam.  I've tolerated this quietly for the last two years or so, but my usage charges have been going through the roof.  While I have been streaming more recently it is't as if I'm downloading multiple HD movies every day.  My usage regularly ranges from 250-300GB now per month, according to ATT's phony records, which it's impossible really to challenge.  One day last month ATT showed me as having downloaded 20GB, on a school day (so can't blame the kids) when my wife and I were out in the evening (so no Netlfix for us that day). 

And my wifi has such limited range that I'm comfortable that none of my neighbors is somehow piggybacking.

So I'm fortunate that I can change to cable Internet (which I'm sure will prove it's own different can of worms), for 10x the speed at ⅓ the price with no caps.  I feel bad for those with no alternatives.

Funny you say this.  I went into an AT&T company store and spent two hours with a manager.  He could not even find my data usage.  Pretty sad state of affairs if you ask me.  Looks like AT&T may be headed for another breakup if they keep this up.  I live in the country an DSL and satellite are my only two choices.  Don't mind paying for what I get but want to know what I got. 

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@DenverGates wrote:

Funny you say this.  I went into an AT&T company store and spent two hours with a manager.  He could not even find my data usage.  Pretty sad state of affairs if you ask me.  Looks like AT&T may be headed for another breakup if they keep this up.  I live in the country an DSL and satellite are my only two choices.  Don't mind paying for what I get but want to know what I got. 

 

 

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It's available on the ATT.COM web site.  Under the MyAtt menu, My Internet> View Plan Details, select View my current Internet usage .  Remember that the dates are based on UTC, not your local time zone, so much of your evening usage will be reflected in the next day.