When Justine Ezarik, a video blogger in Pittsburgh, saw that a box from AT&T had been delivered to her doorstep a couple of weeks ago, she thought that perhaps she had been sent a complimentary accessory for her new iPhone. Instead, she found a 300-page, double-sided, excruciatingly well itemized bill.
Ezarik, 23, made a one-minute video that shows her flipping through the voluminous bill and posted it to YouTube and other video-sharing sites on August 13. The video has since been viewed more than 3 million times.
For the last several weeks, iPhone users have been by turns amused or enraged over the sheer heft--some are the size of small novels--of the bills they are receiving from AT&T.
On Wednesday, in response to Ezarik and scores of others, AT&T's wireless business sent text messages to all its iPhone users to let them know that it will be sending them summarized bills from now on.
By Wednesday afternoon, Apple iPhones around the country were displaying this text message: "We are simplifying your paper bill, removing itemized detail. To view all detail go to att.com/mywireless. Still need full paper bill? Call 611."
As of September 28, all of AT&T's new wireless customers will be sent summary bills. And any customer who makes a change to an existing account, like adding a line, will begin to receive the summary bills as well.
Customers who prefer detailed paper bills will be charged $1.99 a month for each phone line to have these mailed. A spokesman for AT&T, Mark Siegel, said customers could switch to electronic bills and could have those summary bills available online to see the details of their activity.
The reason for the outsize bills is that AT&T itemizes not just every phone call, but every detail about every text message and Internet data transfer. Unless instructed otherwise, AT&T sent out detailed bills.
"It's nonsense," said Mike Brophy, 34, who owns a software company near Seattle and posted an item about his 64-page bill on his blog. "Ninety-five percent of the bill is just page after page of 1K data transfers, all with a charge of zero."
Brophy also did not appreciate the amount of paper. "My bill was probably half a pound," he said. "Just think of the fuel. It's a real waste, not to mention information overload."
Ezarik, who noted that AT&T spent $7.10 in postage to send her bill, got her text message late Wednesday afternoon. She said she planned to switch to e-billing. "Looks like they may have got the message," she said.
Siegel said AT&T had been planning for months to switch to summary bills as its default billing mode, and decided to take action right away, partly in response to the outcry from customers.
"Because of the high data usage we have seen with many of our iPhone customers," he said, "and the potentially voluminous bills that can cause, we thought it made sense to make this change for those customers now."
If these people were really concerned about the environment than they should have gone paperless over two years ago when AT&T (than Cingular) started to offer that option.
I mean come on. Its on every single bill they send out. I'm just tired of this. Get off your horse and do what you should have done years ago.
My T-Mobile bill and my former Verizon bill both took way to many pages. Sometimes it's nice to know about a specific call. I can go online for that. My basic bill should look like this. Plan Minutes 700, Used 322 Evening & Weekends Unlimited, Used 145 Texting Unlimited, Used 1354
Out of Plan: This is where they should itemize, it's what i'm looking for. Especially with T-Mobile since they refuse to turn off the services that I don't want.
I can't believe that they'd let this happen. This must have cost them millions of dollars to produce and mail all of these bills to say nothing of the aforementioned environmental impact.
Can you honestly tell me that no one at AT&T thought this through? I would have someone's head over this kind of fiasco due to the costs, the bad PR, and the underlying lack of awareness that this was going to play out the way it did.
I mean, wasn't there even an intern in the mail room saying "um, guys, there's *six million* pages of bills coming out of the printer" or "you know, we're going to need a *few hundred thousand* extra express mail envelopes to handle the billing this month" ???
Management puts down the lower work force all the time and ignores them. I bet someone at AT&T did say something and was probably ignored.
So now someone in Logistics up in Management will be re-moved, moved or possibly fired, because I would for sure fire someone for this type of stupidity not to mention wonder if they are hard core drug user.
I mean if I rolled a fatty with the best 420 inside of it, you bet you ass I would question it, not just say, duhhhhh it's all good and gravy lets just keep the line moving and process these damn bills.
So if a stoner would question it, I would seriously wonder why straight people with an education, degrees and years of supposibly great Corporate experiance to paste on the resume, didn't question it.
AT&T always sucked, if it wasn't for other technological competition, like Cable and Satelite, we would still be using rotaty phone probably, which I kinda miss :- ) They were heavy, rock solid and I could defend my self with that.
The very reason I went e-bill with Nextel was because they charged a fee to get a detailed call list. Sometimes it would be nice if Nextel offered itemized text message listings, but considering my texts are included in the cost of my plan, I'm not too concerned. But itemizing <i>data access</i> is ridiculous.
I start started with AT&Tingular a few months ago and noticed that craziness with my Razr and text messaging. They could have easily done two or three columns and simplified some repetitive items on the bill.
And if they were paying $7+ to send someone a printed statement, they should be giving them a $1/month credit for switching to eBilling.
Called 611 on my iPhone yesterday and asked for a detailed billing after getting the 611 message. I was told... Not a problem but no mention was made that it will now cost me $1.99 per phone line (I have four lines) to get the itemized billing I've been getting all along on my other three phones. I recently combined my land line with wireless to save $4.00 a month in billing charges. Not much but it's $52.00 a year I can save. Now that I've bought an iPhone I get it stabbed in the back with these extra charges. It looks like AT&T needs to clean up what they track. I'm not a happy camper because they don't have their act together.
In my case I HAVE to have detailed billing due to business usage of the phone(s) but when I call 611 they have no idea these extra charges exist and have no way to exclude specific phones. It's not stated in my contract that I'll be charged per line for a detailed statement, when I've been getting this all along.
At this point in time the rep I talked to is "researching" this revelation... He had no knowledge about the charges. Going to be a lot more upset customers who need detailed billing and now have to pay for it.
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I mean come on. Its on every single bill they send out. I'm just tired of this. Get off your horse and do what you should have done years ago.
dw9
My basic bill should look like this.
Plan Minutes 700, Used 322
Evening & Weekends Unlimited, Used 145
Texting Unlimited, Used 1354
Out of Plan:
This is where they should itemize, it's what i'm looking for. Especially with T-Mobile since they refuse to turn off the services that I don't want.
Can you honestly tell me that no one at AT&T thought this through? I would have someone's head over this kind of fiasco due to the costs, the bad PR, and the underlying lack of awareness that this was going to play out the way it did.
I mean, wasn't there even an intern in the mail room saying "um, guys, there's *six million* pages of bills coming out of the printer" or "you know, we're going to need a *few hundred thousand* extra express mail envelopes to handle the billing this month" ???
So now someone in Logistics up in Management will be re-moved, moved or possibly fired, because I would for sure fire someone for this type of stupidity not to mention wonder if they are hard core drug user.
I mean if I rolled a fatty with the best 420 inside of it, you bet you ass I would question it, not just say, duhhhhh it's all good and gravy lets just keep the line moving and process these damn bills.
So if a stoner would question it, I would seriously wonder why straight people with an education, degrees and years of supposibly great Corporate experiance to paste on the resume, didn't question it.
AT&T always sucked, if it wasn't for other technological competition, like Cable and Satelite, we would still be using rotaty phone probably, which I kinda miss :- ) They were heavy, rock solid and I could defend my self with that.
And if they were paying $7+ to send someone a printed statement, they should be giving them a $1/month credit for switching to eBilling.
billing after getting the 611 message. I was told... Not a problem
but no mention was made that it will now cost me $1.99 per
phone line (I have four lines) to get the itemized billing I've been
getting all along on my other three phones. I recently combined
my land line with wireless to save $4.00 a month in billing
charges. Not much but it's $52.00 a year I can save. Now that
I've bought an iPhone I get it stabbed in the back with these
extra charges. It looks like AT&T needs to clean up what they
track. I'm not a happy camper because they don't have their act
together.
In my case I HAVE to have detailed billing due to business usage
of the phone(s) but when I call 611 they have no idea these extra
charges exist and have no way to exclude specific phones. It's
not stated in my contract that I'll be charged per line for a
detailed statement, when I've been getting this all along.
At this point in time the rep I talked to is "researching" this
revelation... He had no knowledge about the charges. Going to
be a lot more upset customers who need detailed billing and
now have to pay for it.