I recently went overseas, and when I landed I received a message notifying me of high international data rates, including a phone number for a free call to international customer support.
I immediately called the international customer care team to avoid any charges while traveling. The first call was dropped so I called back immediately. Then I was asked to verify the social of the account owner (which is my mother on our family plan) and was unable to call her because I was out of the country and did not want to get charged. The rep insisted she could not give me any info and to call back when I got back to the US. I thought all was fine since I hadn't used any apps/data and turned my phone off for the rest of the trip.
I called international customer support as soon as I landed at the Houston airpot, and it turns out that the 10 minutes I was getting connected to Customer Support and briefly speaking with them my phone racked up 50MB of background data equating to $1028!!! I was in complete shock. The customer rep offered to backdate my plan and add an international data package (costing around $20 - $30) which would have been acceptable to pay. She came back on the line notifying me that my bill had closed as of two days ago and there was no way to add the international data package as explained. The most she could credit back was 50% of the charges which she did and still left me with $500+ data charges, for the 10 minutes WHILE TRYING TO AVOID ANY OF THIS. I said the 50% is great, but that's not going to solve this issue as I'm left with $500. Her manager said she could not assist me any further and to call back tomorrow.
The next day I contacted international support again, and after explaining the situation, the nice lady said that she will have the remaining 50% credited to my account and to check with my local ATT store in the next couple days to make sure everything was taken care of. So I did exactly that, and a week later the other 50% of the charges had not been credited, and there were no notes on the account AT ALL. I was blatantly lied to.
I have since spoken to multiple customer service reps, interational service reps, their managers, and my local ATT store manager, who all insist that although they agree that I should not have to pay for these charges, they do not have the authority to credit more than 50% of any charges back to the account. I have spent 10+ hours trying to get in contact with someone who does have that authority, because someone in a $130 BILLION corporation has to be able to. I was only referred to a MAILING ADDRESS to ATT corporate.
My family and I are loyal customers and have never missed a bill and would like to continue the great relationship with ATT that we've had, but this is unacceptable and makes it very difficult to justify to continue being their customer.
Any help is greatly appreciated.