Upon checking my bill recently I discovered that the "AT&T Free Msg" texts coming from AT&T (from numbers 275 and 295) are showing up on the bill with a $0.20 charge for receipt of the message. Not only that, but in most cases the text appears on the bill as 2 or 3 separate entries because of the length of the "free" texts. In going back through my bill history, this has been happening for well over a year.
Note that I don't have a text message plan on my account. I normally pay the $0.20 / message "Pay-per-use" fee.
The majority of these messages are either alerts that my AT&T bill was paid or travel abroad alerts, like:
"AT&T Free Msg: Reply YES to learn how to get unlimited text and lower data rates when traveling abroad (free to reply). Otherwise your current international rates are: $2.05/MB, $1/min, $0.50/msg sent; $1.30/photo or video msg sent. Call us at +1.214.547.2300 with questions (a free call from this phone)."
I live/work in Buffalo, NY by the Canadian border and sometimes the phone will breifly switch to a Canadian cell tower (while driving, etc.) and I'll get these messages every time it does. Yet each time it charges for 3 messages @ $0.20/msg for a total of $0.60 per incident... yet they're say they are supposed to be free...
I talked with AT&T support today on the phone about the issue and received a $25 bill credit, however, there is no resolution regarding being charged for the free messages. My guess is that someone that set up the billing codes in the AT&T billing system forgot about people without text plans and forgot to tag the "AT&T Free Msg" texts for them accordingly.
I'm writing on here in the hopes that someone involved with the AT&T billing system setup can review things to fix the free texts for myself as well as others in this boat.