Double the Activations, Double the Fun! An iPhone Cautionary Tale
This post is one of those "don't let this happen to you" cautionary tales so please, bear with me as I don't want this to, in fact, happen to you. Or, if it does, I want you to be prepared and know what do do to rectify the situation. Don't worry, it's nothing earth-shattering or extremely dangerous, just a bit of information to help you keep pace with and sometimes pass up "the man" when he tries, intentionally or not, to keep you down.
As some of you may remember, I'm one of the people who first activated an iPhone with a number provided by AT&T during the activation process. My intention at the time was to try out the device and see if I really liked it before fully committing and porting my number over to AT&T from T-Mobile. Well, that test period didn't last very long as I pretty much fell in love with the iPhone (in spite of its issues -- hey, nothing's perfect, right?). So, about a week or so into the testing phase, I opted to go through the porting process.
Fortunately, that went pretty well except that I needed to call back during the week due to the porting department not working on weekends. Other than that, the process was pretty smooth and soon I was making and receiving calls, sending email and text and the rest -- all with my newly ported former T-Mobile phone number. If the story ended there, all would be fine and we could end this post right here too. Sadly, there were one or two glitches that I found out a little later.
Being the somewhat cost-conscious person that I am, i have been monitoring my newly minted AT&T account via their website, mostly to see if and when I go over my amount of minutes or if I'm getting close to my maximum amount of text messages. It's also so I can see what my bill is going to be as soon as it becomes available. Well, a couple days ago I was finally able to see my bill and the total came as a bit of a shock. After only having the iPhone for about two weeks, my bill was already $122.00. So, after seeing that I immediately called AT&T to see how that could have happened.
Well, the answer was actually pretty simple. AT&T had never stopped billing me for the other account I had first established before porting my T-Mobile number over. Plus, I had been charged two different activation fees for my iPhone -- one for the original activation and one when I ported my number over. Naturally, I was a little disappointed at hearing this but the CSR at AT&T couldn't have been more helpful. He immediately removed the extra charges -- including both activations -- reducing my bill to a much more manageable size. So, if any of this applies to you -- particularly if you migrated your number from another carrier after activating a prior AT&T number -- go online right now and make sure your bill is correct. If you do, you might end up saving some money. And if you do, report back and let us know what happened.
