This is a strange article for Liberal America, but I felt it’s the most effective?way to get this message out to a lot of people. I, after all, have no other way to do a shout-out to 150,000 people.
I got an iPhone back when the iPhone 2 came out, and I’m grandfathered in with an unlimited data plan. I have three other phones on my account, plus a personal hotspot. I have unlimited, and my kids have 5GB each. I do allow them to go over as long as they let me know. My bill is sizable.
My billing cycle starts on the 28th. A couple of days ago, my kids and I started getting this notice:
So I called AT&T. I do realize that many people don’t like AT&T, but as a customer, I’ve been well taken care of for about 14 years — I was a Cingular customer. I’ve never had any other cellular/wireless provider and I’m a happy customer. So when the customer service rep came on the phone, he was eager to help me, as is always my experience with them.
The first thing he asked is whether or not I went into a store on August 28th. I told him that I had not. The only time we go to a store is to buy products — charger cords, etc…Apparently a rep in a store changed me over to a mobile?share plan. He did not know (or would not tell me) which store. No notation was made in my account.
Let me be honest here: I?was furious.
There’s a reason for this. Every time I get on the phone with them for ANY REASON, they are trying to get me to switch to a mobile share plan. Why would anyone give up a grandfathered unlimited data plan? It irritates me that they keep bringing it up. I’m fully aware that these mobile share plans benefit one party: AT&T.
I don’t know how anyone with teenagers could ever make this work.
So yeah….I was pretty hot. He quickly explained to me that he can change it back and then he and I slowly began to piece together what happened. I asked him if clerks get any sort of commission or bonus for convincing customers to switch. He said that they do, but that a person has to be switched to a mobile share plan for three months. Bingo. Whoever did this hoped I might not notice.
Here is the thing. Some people may NOT notice. If my parents ever go over their data, I’d be shocked. If a rep switched them, it’s likely that they’d never notice until someday when it’s too late to fix it.
But I have teenagers. Really??? Did whoever did this really think that I would not notice a change like this? Maybe they didn’t look at my account and see that two of my phones use up all their data every month. Maybe it was just a worthwhile gamble to take. I’m fairly certain that whoever did this didn’t just target me. Many customers have probably been victimized. A quick web search did net me this article in AT&T forums.
Check your bills, folks! Sorry to go soooooo far off-topic, but this may help someone.
