I had a visit to Jordan and I ended up staying for 4 months over there. Before leaving the US, I called my wireless provider AT&T asking for the cracking code for my cell phone as I was intending to use a local cell phone provider. The tech support representative was kind enough to offer the code after offering me an international roaming plan that I declined using.
Once I arrived Jordan I took off the SIM card and kept it in my camera's case. I was following my bills every month since I was on a plan. The day of my travel I discovered at the airport that I lost my SIM card. I didn't think it was a big deal back then and assumed that I must have misplaced it home when i was packing for my return trip.
I went to AT&T local branch and was a bit upset that I had to pay $25 for a new SIM card but I was glad that my cell phone is back running. This turned out to be my least problems since I received a bill of the amount of $7500 for the month of March. I felt a bit numb once I read the amount, and I realized that I must have lost my SIM card while doing a trip to PETRA in late march. The detailed calling list showed that the SIM was used from the last 3rd of March. It appeared that the person that found it treated himself well doing so many calls in 10 days or so, and my account was charged for that using a large international roaming charge.
I called the customer service at AT&T and I was starting to freak out. The guy answering the phone was shocked by the amount as I was, and he started filling a case to dispute that amount. he was a nice person to soothe me and to tell me that he thinks that I will end up paying nothing. After that call I went home and made some Online research about similar cases and I was really worried. Here you are with cases of people ending up paying at least a portion of their bill after a huge fight with those multi-million dollar companies. But I got some very good tips such as this web page. What I also found while reviewing the case of one guy with Cingular that one of his strong basis to dispute the charges was the he didn't authorize international roaming! I felt very happy about that since it was my case and now instead of begging for sympathy I have some legal basis for my claim. I also learned that is VERY IMPORTANT to keep a written record of all your phone correspondence with the company (time of the call, name and ID number of the receiver and a summery of the call, and the number of the case). You also need to check if these guys are doing their job. In my case I called the next day asking if the case was submitted, it appeared that it was lost in the system! So I ended up submitting another case. I also got the company to flag my account as being under dispute so that they won't disconnect the service before a resolution is there. I was informed about the expected day of resolution and I got a phone call few days before that stating that my march bell has been resolved and all int. charges are dropped.
Time to celebrate? Not yet! since the mis-usage was done between late March and the middle of April, and my bill covers only the end of March, there was the possibility that my April bill will have the same issue.
And it sure did; I got a bill of almost $5000. This time I had a bit more confidence and I called for a dispute and made a case. Seems that there was a mistake in filling the case since they called back saying there were some missing details and that I had to file another case, that been done and I made sure to refer them to the previous resolution. The next day I got a SMS from the company that my case was resolved. A $5000 worth SMS.
If there is one practical lesson to learn it is that you have to treat your cell-phone just like a credit card. i usually put a lock on my phone but now I will try to learn how to lock my SIM card so that no one can use without the phone. One other thing is the value of a good customer service. When I bought my 2 year plan I felt that I was paying a bit too much for minutes that I hardly use, but now seeing how AT&T was gracious in dealing with this crises it made me value their service even more. And this will weigh in my decision in renewing my plan with them or simply go to a pre-paid option, where even if the SIM was missing you won't freak out.
I am very hopeful to be able to get back to Jordan one day, and maybe I will do some effort to locate that rascal that started all this.
