Beware: known AT&T data overage charges problem

Question

I imagine AT&T will delete this rather than help, but here is our story anyway.
My husband purchased a Sony phone with his upgrade last year. Due to numerous problems, he spent hours on the phone with them troubleshooting the phone and went through 3 replacements before they would consent to sending him a different model. And by "troubleshooting", I mean they informed him it was too new and that they didn't have the instruction manual for it yet. Because apparently that's a good excuse. He now has a Samsung, which THEY sent him.
For the past 4 months, we've been hit with data overage charges at $15 for 1 GB after we surpass our 6 GB plan. This month it happened 3 times, including once 3 HOURS before our billing cycle ended. We had been just paying the fee, assuming it was ours, but that pushed us over the edge enough to call. We had been on Wi-Fi all day and logically could not have accrued data usage.
The CSRs refused to do anything. Everytime we asked for a supervisor, we were told that we weren't getting a refund so it was pointless to speak to one -- even though we NEVER asked for a refund. When we got to the "team manager", he tried to blame our WiFi connection (which is through uVerse, so he made me transfer to them) but our connection worked just fine and we have no trouble on our other devices. After an hour, he offered me a $30 credit and said there was nothing he could do. At one point he even told me my husband probably incurred the high usage because "some of the features his phone offers include crystal-clear hi-def video and improved gaming experience". RIGHT.
Another CSR hung up on us after we had waited over an hour for a manager and she yelled at my husband to stop mentioning mobile and Uverse in the same breath because they were different entities -- even though we were only speaking to her about this problem because uVerse had transferred us to her after HER SUPERVISOR made us talk to UVerse!! It was a nightmare that we wasted our entire Saturday night on.
Five hours later, we had learned that not ONLY does AT&T know about this problem, but it happens frequently! My husband's phone said "connected to Wi-Fi", but it really was running on 4G. This is a common occurrence and [Per Guidelines:  Keep it Relevant and Appropriate]. The "solution" is to manually disable your data plan everytime you want to use Wi-Fi instead. Because that's convenient! Rather than fix the problem, AT&T is content to wrack up the money from overage charges and collect a payday. And even though they know that millions of people suffer from this issue, they make the concious decision to not warn customers. It's a major scam and most people would unquestioningly pay the fee and not ask why. They made a point of saying it's a "precaution", but a few of them slipped up and said it's "required" or "always needed." Yet it's not in the contract, we never received a letter, and our phone use no language that implies this must or even kinda-should be done.
Another CSR told us that the phone was under warranty and transferred me to the warranty department for yet another replacement. I was then told by the lone intelligent employee that they could NOT replace it because this is a known AT&T problem, not a device problem. She troubleshot my husband's phone and discovered that it ran on 4G despite saying it was connected to WiFi-- JUST LIKE WE HAD SAID. No one else even offered to troubleshoot or explained how to tell if your Wi-Fi was actually running!!! They just said we couldn't prove thar our Wi-Fi should have been used, so there was nothing we could legally do about it. If you're going to run a scam and steal my hard-earned cash, you had better not gloat about the foolproof-ness of your plan to me.
She did a factory reset and got it to connect and assured us it was fine. This morning (first day of cycle) I woke up and immediately checked our usage. HE ALREADY RECORDED 1 MB OF DATA AND WE HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN OUT OF BED YET. Wi-Fi was on all night and supposedly his phone was "fixed". There's no excuse for that. I'll be calling again shortly and I sincerely hope I don't have to go through six employees and a uverse technichian again just to find someone who actually makes an attempt to be helpful .
I'm calling a scam where I see it, AT&T. Be ashamed. I intend to file every possible complaint with every possible consumer watchdog group, if you don't come up with a whole lot better of a solution than taunting customers with, "You can't prove it, so LOL, joke is on you!" Your company is the real joke. Nothing but shady business practices and terrible customer service. 

Answer 1

I can't help but laugh when I read these stories... I too am dealing with this-- and well have been dealing with it for 14 months. I have now entered Arbitration with AT&T  because (not to belittle your occurrences), my numbers will blow your mind... I have a grandfathered iphone data plan, and with my iphone 5 I have never exceeded 4 gb/month, in my 20 year history with AT&T. Typically my data usage is more like 1.78/mo.  The same month I got the iphone5, I also got AT&T Mifi device (Elevate and later move into the Liberate) both horrible products btw. Suddenly, and without warning my monthly bills skyrocketed from $140/month to $1300/month!!! The best part, though I'm unemployed and barely making ends meet as is, AT&T would shut down my only ports to the outside world if my $1300 monthly bills were not paid in full and on time-- for the past 14 months. My seemingly small but regular 1.78gb iphone usage shot up to an unfathomable 70 gb in one month, and the mifi device alone did around 70 gb, capping out at around 140gb a month!!! That's about $800 just in overages. And of course, AT&T to this day blames me for the usage.  Mind you, my usage consists of searching job sites like monster,submitting Word document resumes, checking email and facebook... that's it! I buy an itunes song MAYBE once every 6-9 months. I don't stream anything, I don't watch movies or play games. I've broken AT&T down to finally admit, "We just don't know how to fix the problem." THANK YOU! Yet, they continue to bend over people like me financially solely to benefit their already multi-bajillion dollar company. In my story, the epicenter of the madness, I believe, is with the mifi devices. Though I found stories of this stemming back to 2011, a year before I even got the device, AT&T continues to this day to 1. play dumb2. refuse to remedy the problem3. continue to blackmail their customers to pay or we'll shut you down4. change vendors5. inform their customers of the problem they will most likely encounter with these devil devices6. continue to release new versions of the same devil devices-- again, with no warning I find my theory to be true, because not only are AT&T customers having this problem, Verizon customers that have an iphone5 and mifi devices (same vendor for AT&T and Verizon) are screaming verbatim my story. I had the hang ups, I had the passed person to person phone calls... in my first 6 months of trying to remedy the problem for AT&T, I made over 300 phone calls to AT&T, and within those 300 phone calls, I had to share my hugely longwinded story over 1400 times because for each of those 300 calls, I talked to no less than 6 people per phone call as I played the pass around or "oopsie we hung up" game. Since my drama started over a year ago, I'm finding more people getting vocal about this problem. That's great, and sucky all at the same time. That's great that people are informing others and starting to scream loud enough that people are taking notice-- everyone but AT&T. It's sucky that so many people are being  forced to maneuver their way through this AT&T chaos. I don't tolerate being abused. And I sure as heII don't tolerate PAYING someone to abuse me.Keep screaming everyone... it will pay off. I wish everyone the best in finding remedies that work for them, as we all power together to do AT&T's job for them... freaking amazing.