I used to have ATT individual account for a few years. I switched to business account because I worked at a company which had some special deals with ATT Wireless. I got two benefits - discounted plan fees, and free discounted international dialing. Additionally as a one-month promotion, I got mmode data plan free. At the end of the one month I cancelled my data plan. This was in September 2004.

Now, I do not go through my bills in detail if the amount is approximately what I expect. But this month I noticed that the bill was unusually high, and one of the high charges were from international calling - I was charged 85 cents/min to India, when the discounted rate is supposed to be 32 cents/min.

I called the 800# and the first customer service rep (Sara Rothwell) told me that my international plan was removed along with the data plan and that now if I want to add it back it will be at $3.99/month for discounted international dialing. I was not happy about three things here:
1. Plan was apparently promotional (discounted int’l dial) and I was not told that clearly
2. Plan was removed without informing me at the time of removal
3. I was charged a high rate and then when the situation was recognized, I was told that it cannot be restored without charging the monthly fee

I was bounced to a resolution specialist (Natalie Duke) who was very curt and asked me to take it or leave it. At the end, I did not sign up for the plan and hoped that at least the charges since September would get reversed. The explanation given was that I have to go through each bill line-by-line every month, to note any changes from the previous month. Are you kidding me???

Bills are now in 9 or 10 page range and I have no time to go through all the details, I explained. She said that all notifications are sent through invoice and that it is not ATT’s fault that they did not inform me about that international plan change.

I think it is ridiculous on their part to remove something I did not request for removal. And then it is also customer unfriendly to not restore the services as they existed before the ‘removal’. And now that there are fewer players in the market with all the mega mergers happening, I have no choice really. And of course, there is the dreaded contract period. I asked her about that too - I wanted to cancel right away, but since I was months away from the end of my contract period, I was told it would cost me $175/line (my wife’s and mine)!

I hope this posting will help other customers realize how bad AT&T Wireless (Cingular) is. And you know what, I think it is because of Cingular. I had them before and I use to hate them and was so happy to have gotten rid of them, and now it has come back to haunt me. Can’t wait for this contract to end.