AT&T has been trending heavily on Twitter of late, and not because of its friendship with the iPhone.
Adam Savage has invoked the wrath of 50,000 Twitter followers in the general direction of telecommunications giant AT&T due to a $11,000 phone bill incurred while Savage was in Canada. Savage says he surfed the web on a mobile modem for “a few hours,” inadvertently cha-chinging up a bill that could keep any sane person in hookers and blow for at least a month.
This series of tweets explains the pricey lappity-toppity session and the ensuing massive bill:
Sorry, bit of explanation: device in question wasn’t my phone, it was the AT&T usb connect Mercury modem.
And I got the “data is charged at .015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb”. About to try to explain the difference to them. Sigh.
They’re claiming I uploaded/downloaded 9 million kilobytes (9 gigs) while in Canada. Frakking impossible.
@sleepingbri you read it right. $11,000.00
Did I mention they’ve turned off my phone until I pay? #attsucks
Almost forgot: Hey AT&T! I will fight this bullshit.
Text messaging fees are stupid robbery? (they are), AT&T is attempting to charge me 11k for a few hours of web surfing in Canada. Pls RT!
Savage soon updated that AT&T was quick to quash the spurious charges after the fast and furious backlash:
Today the tweeps became twoops. Just got off the phone with AT&T and they’ve taken care of everything to my great satisfaction.#twitterrules
But would any of us have received the same quick and painless resolution? On that, Savage says:
I agree with everyone: it shouldn’t just work for me. The data carriers MUST stop thinking in kilobytes and start thinking in customers.
