I am typing this from the floor right now.

I am in complete shock.

I finally got my first online bill from AT&T yesterday and it came to $5,086.66!!

Have I gone insane? Did they append that $6.66 at the end of the bill just to screw with me?

After a near heart attack I called AT&T to find out what had happened....

Well as you may have guessed by now these are all charges for using the edge network while roaming internationally (in England). No phone calls mind you just data. According to AT&T that's at a rate of $2cents per K! WTF? Why don't you rape me and my whole family while you're at it? From all you can use for $20 bucks a month to $2cents per K?! $20 per web-page? Are you INSANE?

That's like charging you $2cents per molecule of gas for you car!

I was taken aback that I was charged at all for this, I mean doesn't my plan include all you can use data? And don't you have to call the cell company to activate overseas usage in advance?

Well that's what I had thought (it's how all my previous carriers handled overseas roaming) but apparently 4 months ago AT&T quietly changed their policy and now they automatically activate international roaming based on your credit worthiness. Yay, my great credit worthiness entitles me to rack up $5k in data charges I didn't know I would be charged for.

While I was in England I actually tried to access my account to find out how much data I was using and my account only showed "data not available". $5k for something I had no idea I would be charged for, (let alone those exorbitant rates of $2cents per K!) and no way of checking my data consumption .

Ack.

So after I got off the phone with AT&T yesterday (monday 13th August) I did some googleing and found out about that poor chap Dave Stolte who got dinged for $3k from AT&T for the same thing!

Seems like AT&T waived his charges, lucky guy!!

So now I'm left in a (worse) position of AT&T claiming I owe them $5k for data consumption in the same country at the same time!!

I can only hope they handle this as nicely as they did for Dave; $5k is simply INSANE.

Adam

P.S. you can email me from my company web-site at the link at the top of the page if you have any suggestions...