Mythbusters' Savage The Latest Socked With Huge 3G Bill [Broadband Reports]
Discovery Channel's Mythbusters star Adam Savage has become the latest victim of AT&T's exorbitant data roaming charges, running up an $11,000 bill for mobile data use in Canada. On Friday, Savage let the world know about his billing predicament via Twitter.
Turns out that AT&T is attempting to collect for 9 gigabytes of data downloaded via an AT&T mobile data card during a trip that Savage took to Canada, thus incurring roaming charges for data usage. Savage contends he didn't download anywhere near 9 GB of data during the trip. AT&T turned off Savage's account after the bill hit $11,000.
It seems that every couple of months a new horror story regarding AT&T mobile data usage charges emerges. I can't believe that the policies that lead to these types of charges are so important to the bottom line that AT&T doesn't see fit to change them -- especially after they have to expend such energy repairing their public relations whenever one of these makes headlines.
The post at Broadband Reports links to a number of the five figure bills that AT&T has sent customers that had the misfortune of downloading a significant amount of data via the mobile network. And while the article credits AT&T for suspending Savage's account before his bill become "truly extraterrestrial," I would challenge anyone that thinks an $11,000 mobile phone bill already is anything but extraterrestrial.
Until AT&T gets some controls on its mobile data billing practices, it's surf at your wallet's risk if you're an AT&T customer.
There's a reason why I explictly called Cingular (as they were known at the time) and told them to disable any data access from my phone plan after signing up for service, and crap like this is it.
They did so, and to this day if I hit the 'homepage' on my phone, I get a 'service not available' message.
Posted by: Glocksman | Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 08:10 PM
Or..if you are a customer of any wireless provider..why not just read the terms and conditions of using your phone abroad? I'm quite sure that the wireless network he was roaming on correctly calculated the useage right..
Posted by: Justin | Monday, May 10, 2010 at 10:13 PM