One of the big knocks that people have about the iPhone is that the carrier is AT&T, and only AT&T. I guess a lot of folks don't like them, but my experience with them off and on over the past 10 years has been pretty good. And, I don't think they have the severe problems like Sprint does with inaccurate billing. I travel and roam all the time with my Cingular/AT&T phone and never have a problem with my bill.
Until now.
I just took a look at my new bill, which includes service for the first three days that I've owned an iPhone (June 29 thru July 1). On June 29, the same day I activated the iPhone, I was charged $7.73 for 773 KB of data transfer. I never used my old phone for data, and from the timestamps on the detailed billing I knew that it was from when I first started using my iPhone.
Logically the iPhone's unlimited data plan should have kicked in the day I activated the phone, and I shouldn't owe AT&T anything additional for data sent with the iPhone. So, with some trepidation I called AT&T customer service, kept hitting "0" to speak to an operator, and after being warned about "long delays due to unusually high call volumes" I was told the average wait was six minutes. Heh—that's nothing!
As promised, in about six minutes I spoke with John, explained the problem, verified my identity, was credited for that data use, and then given my new balance. Total time on the phone was less than 10 minutes.
Now I assume that John correctly updated my billing record and that this is the end of the matter. It's always possible that something could happen after I hang up the phone and the credit doesn't go through. But for now AT&T has the benefit of the doubt and I believe the problem is solved.
So, what's the problem with AT&T again?
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