Leaving AT&T Wireless? Make sure you call them first.
I cancelled my AT&T/iPhone account last month on the 15th (1 day after my 2 year contract was up) and switched to T-mobile. During the phone number porting process, T-mobile told me I didn’t need to do anything to cancel my old AT&T account, which is true and worked great. I’ve spent the last 3 weeks in cell phone heaven, making calls in my house, receiving text messages, having service in restaurants, and generally enjoying life. Until today when I got a bill from AT&T.
By sheer coincidence I also had my credit card number stolen about a week prior to switching. This is important because I was on AutoPay with AT&T on that card, which I obviously cancelled as soon as I heard it was stolen. Today, I get an e-mail from AT&T that says I’m $67 (a full month) overdue on my account, plus a $1 late fee. When they tried to bill me for the full month of September, the credit card declined and they didn’t get paid. So I call them up this morning to get this resolved and without even asking for a bill reduction, the phone rep says he’ll go ahead and “manually pro-rate” the account down to $32, which sounds about right to me. AT&T was happy to auto-bill my account for $35 they knew didn’t belong to them, hoping I wouldn’t notice it.
So this is just a reminder that when you switch cell companies mid-month, they’ll happily bill you for the entire thing if you don’t call and remind them not to steal from you. Also, I’ve heard reports from friends that T-mobile did the exact same thing, so this is probably widespread across the cellular industry. Call your old wireless provider when you cancel. The number-porting auto-cancel is certainly convenient, but it could also cost you quite a bit of money, especially if you cancel early in your billing cycle.