AT&T Roaming Incident Report (22誠鉉)

What happened?

On December 15th I landed in Korea with no phone service, so I used 600MB under the International Day Pass.

The next day my local SIM worked, so I disabled my AT&T SIM (eSIM only, so I couldn't eject it).

I also turned off International Day Pass on my account, thinking I wouldn't need more roaming usage. I did not know I would be billed only for the day I use it.

I asked to remove IDP on December 16th. AT&T backdated the removal to December 15th and charged me $1200 for data I'd used under the Day Pass.

Support said the charge was "valid" and they couldn't do anything.

After days of back and forth and a two-hour support session, they finally admitted it was their error. They said,

It was an AT&T error; expect the charges to be waived. A credit of $1150 would show on the account within 24-48 hours.

Takeaways

If you're on AT&T, never remove your International Data Pass.

Growing up in Korea, it was interesting to see that in the United States you should protect and exercise your own rights proactively.

If a similar thing happened in Korea, I could've simply filed a dispute to the local government on my phone and they will basically autopilot everything to the conclusion.

In the United States it is my job to negotiate and discuss the terms proactively, for my best interest.