AT&T GoPhone Pay As You Go, even when you're going nowhere Nationwide

I've had a GoPhone for a couple years now, and until recently, it's been fine. They have two types of prepaid plans, a Pay as You Go (where you have to refill your account balance with phonecards, and the cost for any services you use are deducted from your balance), and a Pick Your Plan, which offers different services and features based on how much you pay.

For over a year I had the Pick Your Plan option, and AT&T (then Cingular) would automatically draft my payments. The only problem I had then was that one month, they double-dipped, and I had to spend an hour on the phone getting transferred from one service rep to another to get my money back.

After I lost that phone, I got another GoPhone, but since I don't talk or text much, I wanted the cheapest option available (or so it seemed). I went with Pay as You Go, where calls cost 10 cents/minute, texts are 20 cents (incoming or outgoing, which is twice as much as most other companies are charging), and you are charged $1.00 a day only on days you use your phone.

Sometime in the past month, I have noticed that I am being CHARGED for calls I don't even answer. Most phone companies will not charge your balance or deduct minutes if a call is not completed (ie, busy signal or the phone just rings and rings without going to voicemail). I have never heard of being charged for calls made to you that you don't connect with. I can't imagine such a plan would be very popular, because most people would just turn off their phones to avoid having to pay NOT to talk to people.

It's happened half a dozen times now. I would look at my phone at the end of my workday (I keep my phone in my locker), and notice that I had that I had a missed call. When I acknowledged that pop-up, I'd get another one that said "the last transaction cost $x.xx, your remaining balance is $x.xx". I'd think, "isn't that odd, why is AT&T charging me for usage when I'm not even using my phone?"

I don't give my number out to a lot of people, so I tend not to answer unfamiliar callers. I'll hear the phone start to ring, look at the display, and decide if I wish to answer it. If not, I choose the "ignore" or "silence" option. Just out of curiousity, the last two times I got "unknown caller" on my phone, I didn't do anything - didn't press ignore, didn't even scroll the little wheel. A minute or so after the ringing stopped, I would get that message. "You have 1 missed call." "The last transaction cost $1.10 including your daily usage fee."

My boyfriend has the exact same plan - AT&T GoPhone with the Pay as You Go option. He says he hasn't been having this problem. But it isn't a problem with the phone (ie, the phone answering itself) if it's saying I have a MISSED call. Missed = not answered.

Whatever. A lot of large companies feel they can rip off their poorest customers (and what are prepaid phones geared towards if not the poor, with their benefits including "no contract! no credit check!") by nickel-and-diming them to death. I'm not letting that happen - as soon as my balance expires (which will be in a few days), I'm getting rid of AT&T for good.

Danae
Greensboro, North Carolina
U.S.A.