AT&T Go Phone, charged for unanswered calls, no more renewal notices, poorer coverage, loss of prepaid balance Little Rock Arkansas

I, too, now have the problem of being charged for unanswered calls. The phone sits on my desk. It doesn't always happen, but sometimes if it rings and I don't answer, the screen will show that I've been charged. That never happened when it was Cingular. My prepaid plan is for ten cents a minute plus a dollar a day for any day I use the phone. That means I'm usually also paying an extra dollar for those unanswered calls because I don't use my phone much.

I bought my Go Phone from Cingular and marked it on my calendar when my anniversary date was to renew. The service was crystal clear everywhere I went. It was truly excellent. I received courtesy calls or messages before my anniversary dates to advise me to renew.

Then AT&T bought Cingular. Now the service is clear only if I'm in AT&T's area. I received a message on my screen earlier in March, 2009 that showed that I had a balance left of $130. On the anniversary date I discovered my phone would not handle calls at all. AT&T never gave me a courtesy call or message about renewal, absolutely no notice at all.

I renewed on the anniversary date of when I bought the phone to find a balance of only $10 above the $100 renewal. Now I think the reason AT&T didn't send me a courtesy call or message was so they could just take my prepaid balance. My receipt states that renewal must be before the one-year date of the receipt to carry the balance forward. What a dirty trick!

Lose one day every year if you want to carry your balance forward, and don't expect any notices from AT&T. AT&T's managers must get paid very well to dream up such sneaky tricks. It's still the best service available, but it isn't what it was when I bought my GoPhone from Cingular.

Hillcrest
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas
U.S.A.