International Plan Scam

I disagree!!!! In Canada on roam for like 2 hrs. Only used my gps. Called AT&T and asked about plan. Only in Canada for 1 night. After I declined to pay $60 or more I started to receive texts saying I owed them $500 in data charges. They shut my phone down. I called. Lady said I only owed $17. She kept saying she was taking the international block off but wasn't. Then she said I indeed owed $500 and could, in her words "cover it up" I needed to pay $60. I will be taking this up with AT&T when I return to the US. Then I'm switching carriers!!! I been a customer of AT&T for about 20 yrs!!! This is how I'm treated? I believe it was a total scam!!! They shut my phone down completely and would not turn in on till I paid $60. SCAM SCAM SCAM!!!!

@Steviecop

she didnt cover up...she offered to back date a passport plan to reduce the $500 bill.

read here:   Learn stuff.  https://www.att.com/offers/international-plans.html

@gparker03

https://www.att.com/offers/international-plans.html

Check your country to try to see if it was on the list.  I’m not aware any plan other than prepaid is excluded, what is excluded is about 1/2 of the countries ATT has a roaming agreement with.  

Every AT&T international data plan is a scam.  I haven’t tried the $10/day pass, but even if works as advertised it’s a ripoff at $300/month which is 5 to 10 times the cost of an international SIM card with as much prepaid data as most of us will use in a month.  

I have bought the 1 GB and 3 GB plans for $60 and $120 per month respectively.  And these are OUTRAGEOUS RIPOFFS because you get maybe 10% of the data you pay for.   I suspected AT&T was inflating the cellular data usage and this week I’ve confirmed it.  

I got the 1 GB plan on my AT&T phone for my ongoing European trip.  And I got a Vodafone SIM card for an old phone.  I’ve been using the Vodafone SIM almost exclusively for a week.  Literally at least 90% of the time.  Now nine days into my trip AT&T has logged 1.4 GB of cellular data and the phone with the VodaFone SIM is at 780 MB (or about 0.8 GB).    I don’t know how AT&T gets away with this but it’s a total f’ing scam.  I’ve been an AT&T customer for 10 years, but I’m going to be traveling a lot now so I’m changing carriers. 

And don’t tell me about settings for push notifications or anything else.  That has nothing to do with it.  I had no Wi-Fi my last week in the US.  I was using 100% cellular data that week on my AT&T account phone.  I used it several hours a day for surfing, all email, and used GPS navigation every day.  My data usage was under 2 GB that week.  

On the same phone one week later in Europe AT&T tells me I used 1 GB in less than two hours with maybe 10 minutes of navigation involved.  There is no viable explanation for this being anything other than fraud.  

@Stevebye I don’t think you understand the word scam. International plans are expensive for sure and may not be a good deal, but not a scam. Even if you believe the plans are a ripoff, ripoff is not the same as scam. As for your international usage, the usage is reported to ATT by the foreign carrier. If it is not accurate, blame the foreign carrier, not ATT. 

@Stevebye Your phone tracks all data usage. Next time you travel, reset your data stats, you will then be able to tell if your phone matches what is being reported. You will even be able to tell what apps use the data.

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@Stevebye 
I doubt AT&T is paying Dutch VodaFone more per GB than I’m paying them for my prepaid SIM plan. 

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Why do you think that?