Texas man issues warning over $6,000 'red flag' phone bill from AT&T

There's nothing worse than receiving your phone bill and seeing that you've been slapped with excess charges. Unless you know you've gone over your bill, it's a case of trying to figure out why you've been charged more, then arguing with the phone company over the unexpected and unwelcome charges.

Now, one Texas man has taken to Reddit to warn others of his plight after reportedly receiving a $6,223.60 bill from AT&T. It's not quite the same as when someone received a $20,000 bill for 16 minutes of usage, but it's still a worrying amount.

One man thinks he racked up $6,000 in just one day (LSOphoto / Getty)

Referring to this 'red flag' situation, u/Usual-Guava-8899 explained how his monthly bill for November 2024 spiked by a jaw-dropping $5,956.92.

Laying out how he has four wireless phone plans with AT&T and iPhones on account, he uses a first responder discount and typically has a bill of around $250 a month.

The OP adds: "I look at the email and to my shock I see my amount due is $6223.60!!! I seriously almost had a heart attack. I have been with AT&T for over a decade and I have always had unlimited plans so I knew this was a mistake."

AT&T customer service apparently couldn't find the bill, meaning he headed to a physical store to try and get to the bottom of it. He suspects that when he moved over to AT&T's FirstNet plan (a wireless broadband network for first responders), he might've been placed on a 'Data Pay Per Use' plan for a single day. Crunching the numbers, he was seemingly charged $2 per MB for 3,097 MB of data usage.

Even though he says staff in the store were 'stunned' at what was due, promises that he'd hear back from head office didn’t happen. The post continues: "This has caused a huge amount of stress on me and my family around the holidays. I am fairly certain this will be resolved but even the store associate told me he was '99% sure AT&T would fix this’."

Asking if anyone else had had a similar situation, he said he was rightly left with questions about what would happen if AT&T didn’t remedy it: “Shouldn’t there be some kind of red flags raised before this bill gets sent to a customer? How many people has this happened to? I am at a loss and very worried."

In the comments, one concerned Redditor wrote: "Best of luck. AT&T customer service is pretty abysmal and very slow. They'll also cut off your service for non payment while you dispute the charge."

Another simply said: "I’d perish instantly seeing that number 💀."

He'd thankfully canceled automatic payments, as someone else wrote: "This is exactly why I will never ever use auto pay! Companies, even banks, make mistakes that can wipe you out and snowball while they are working it out."

Thankfully, AT&T help reached out in the Reddit comments and asked for the OP to send a DM to try and resolve the issue. As a follow-up, he confirmed it had been fixed and he could finally get on without worrying he was paying $6,000 for a monthly phone bill: "AT&T also extended me a goodwill credit which was very much appreciated. Hats off to the office of the president as they provided amazing service and got the issue resolved ASAP once they got involved."