AT&T: thieving scummy bastards

[Exhibitman]

A little background: I hate cell phones with a passion. I think they are stress-inducing, intrusive and unnecessary [except for emergencies], and terribly disruptive of personal privacy. Needless to say, while I am forced to have one, I try to keep it as minimal as I can. I do not surf the net with it, I do not send texts (just respond to what I get from my wife or daughter). I don't even turn it on unless I am out. In short, I just hate the things, but necessities being what they are I have to have one. My wife loves them. She shuffled phones last year to get an iphone and gave me her old blackberry to use as a phone. We did not sign up for a data plan for my phone with AT&T because I have zero use for or interest in it

Today, my wife was calling AT&T about something and was informed that my phone has a data plan on it, to the tune of $25 a month. Since we never signed up for one, she was ticked off. I had to call AT&T to get to the bottom of it in my usual [i.e., nasty and confrontational] mode. Turns out that AT&T actively looks for blackberries used as phones and when it finds one it slaps the most expensive data plan it has on the line. Without any notice except a text. I looked for the text that I'd supposedly gotten months ago and I found it. All it says is that the blackberry is registered with AT&T. To me, all that says is that my phone is working. Nothing about a fee or data plan or any other consequence, and certainly nothing disclosing that AT&T has assigned me their most expensive data plan even though they know I don't use the internet from my phone. AT&T won't remove it either; their position is that as long as you have a "smart phone" you have to buy a data plan even if you did not order it, don't want it and don't use it. Apparently, they bury that requirement somewhere in the small print in their contract. Needless to say, to stop paying for a service I don't want and did not order I had to go out and buy a new "dumb phone" that does not require a data plan and then cancel the data plan.

What makes it worse is that my wife had the device for a year or so but she never had a data plan with the blackberry because AT&T did not require it under the contract for her line. It was only when she switched over the phone so I could use it that we got hit.

I am livid about having to pay for a service I did not order and do not want, particularly how underhandedly they slipped it in there. And talk about shameless, the rep even tried to sell me more services while I was complaining about how deceitful and unethical they are.

One word of advice: if you are forced to go with AT&T, force them to send you a paper bill and scour it for unwanted additions.