THUMBS ON THE SCALES!
I have been a lowal customer for nearly a decade. I have a 3GB wireless data plan and had to go out of state for work. Being away from wifi for the majority of my trip I hit about 90% of my data limit. I had almost 2 weeks left on my billing cycle. I turned off my mobile data immediately and started using my company privided wifi (Verizon) for mobile data. All was well. I contonued running my USSD code daily to monitor data usage (*3282#) I also used the phones (galaxy note 3) data usage meter to make sure that nothing funny was going on.
All was well for the next week and a half. Until.... the day before the end of my billing cycle, I did my daily USSD code in the morning and found that I had gone over my data usage by over 100MB. There had been an increase the day before my billing cycle ended by about 200MB.
I get a nice message saying that I will now be charged an extra $10 a month for an upgraded data plan.
I call customer service and cry shenanigans. The rep told me that I went over my data limit. I explained that my phones data service had been shut off for almost 2 weeks. She then told me that my phone must be malfunctioning and I should have it check by tech support. So.... after work I walk down to the ATT store (downtown SF) and the supervisor of tech support takes a look at it. He confirms that the phone is fine. Then he confirms that I had used NO DATA for the preceding 2 weeks and has no clue how I could have gone over my data limit.
I call customer support again and am given the same line of B-S. They escelate this to a manager who, after 45 minutes, of repeating the same nonsense, tells me.... The tech at the store gave you misinformation. You indeed went over your data limit because my system says so. I ask him... So... you are telling me that the data usage meter on my phone, along with the 3rd party data usage meter that I installed... AND the tech support rep at your store are ALL wrong and the numbers on your computer are correct? I then accused ATT of tipping the scale at the last minute to get more money out of me and said that they got caught. They then offered to refund me the overage charges, as if that would satisfy me. I am NOT satisfied. If I had not been more diligent, they would have ripped me off and who knows how many other customers are being ripped off now.
I took this to twitter and talked with the ATT Cares rep. Afer about a week of going back and forth... I was just simply told. "Your data usage reporting is delayed. We only have one system so the actual usage reported is delayed. We dont add up the actual data used until the end of your billing cycle."
Sure... I can understand a 10-20MB diecrepancy... but 200MB... are they serious? This just futher valiates my accusations of scale tipping. Putting their thumbs on the scales on the last day to tip you over your limit. then trying to say that the system is just delayed.
If you are tired of being ripped off, follow me on twitter @mpmontero and retweet my updates about this fraud.