Ripped off by AT&T
 

On the first day of our vacation an ATM in Venice "ate" my card.

I called Bank of America and was assured that they would send me a new card. I very carefully gave the address in Venice. (the replacement was mailed to my office-duh).

When it had not arrived I called from Sorrento using AT&T's access number.

Big mistake - my credit card was billed $27.60 for a brief call.:-[

I have learned that calling cards for the most part are a big "rip off". You pay for a call to the US and then another rate added on for the call. The worst is using such a card for calling within the country you are staying in. You end up paying a rate to the US and then another rate for calling back to your own country.

Believe it or not, my best savings on international calls have been by dialing direct from smaller hotels in Europe. They mainly have international special rates and just charge you for those -- lower than any calling card I've found.

I, too, got ripped off calling the US from Europe (Athens) using an AT&amp;T calling card and access number. I should have known better, because I usually buy a local calling card when traveling. But this time I decided to use AT&amp;T, thinking that the rate would be <i>somewhat</i> comparable. Wrong! I called AT&amp;T and complained when I got back, but to no avail.

I'm sorry this happened to you, but you are not alone. Thanks for posting the caveat.

I feel bad for all of you that got charged a lot for your calls, but saying that you got &quot;ripped off&quot;, is I believe inaccurate. Being &quot;ripped off&quot; would mean that AT&amp;T told you the call would be much cheaper and then charged you more. I'm sure that if you had called AT&amp;T before making the call, you would have been told how much your call would be.

Calling cards are known to have high rates per minute, ANYTIME you use a calling card, make sure you are 100% sure of the rate you will be charged.

&quot;Ripped off would mean that AT&amp;t told you the call would be much cheaper and then charged you a lot more.&quot; Well, that's one definition of rip-off. Another is when you don't get a good value for your money, which is the case with using calling cards and AT&amp;T foreign access codes.

AT&amp;T's marketing of their foreign access codes implies you will receive a reasonable rate by getting through to an AT&amp;T operator when traveling overseas. This isn't necessarily true and their ads are misleading.

I know that the onus is on the user to know the rates before using the card, but we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world and sometimes we fall short. That's why it's nice to have forums like this so we can share information and keep each other on our toes.(Yeah, I once got caught by them too, and yeah, I'm rationalizing).

Live and learn!

Several years ago I signed up for a special international rate with AT&amp;T on my long distance service at home. For something like $2.00 a month, all my international calls would be really cheap, and they made it clear that calls I made &quot;home&quot; from overseas would be the same rate. Since I was making a lot of calls and faxes before I went, I signed up, and used the special coded card calling back to the states quite a few times during my stay in Europe. I was shocked when I got home and discovered that my phone calls were horribly expensive. When I called them to ask why I didn't get the rate they informed me that rate only applied to calling my own number from overseas. Wouldn't that do a lot of good if I'm not at home??? Duh!!

So far everyone has responded to the issue of AT&amp;T. But Ed had a much bigger problem: that of losing his ATM card on his first day!
I probably would have had the same problem on Sept. 12 when I used mine at the Frankfurt am Main airport had a rep of AMSOUTH bank not suggested that I should notify the bank that I was about to use the card in Germany.
The reason Ed had his ATM card &quot;eaten&quot; by a cash machine is probably that the bank owner of the machine thought it was a stolen card.

As long as we're trashing AT&amp;T...My NYC phone lines got &quot;slammed&quot; by AT&amp;T during the year of my late mother's struggle with cancer. I was going home for three week visits every month and didn't notice my phone bill had changed. I discovered the illegal act three months later and hit the roof. I had the WORST time trying to get AT&amp;T to issue a ($687) refund and endured many supervisors who hung up on me. The truth is, AT&amp;T never issued the refund because Bell Atlantic, NYC's local carrier at the time, got tired of trying to deal with them. Bell Atlantic refunded my payments and placed a freeze on my phone accounts. I will NEVER give one dollar to AT&amp;T again.

Belatedly getting around to responding.

I had notified BofA that I would be in Italy as I always do when being out of my immediate area.

Fortunately I had another debit card

Yeah, dealing with AT&amp;T is an exercise in frustration. :-B

Phone company calling cards are usually a ripoff. Calling cards you get from the corner store are often an excellent deal.

Phone company cards are even a &quot;rip off&quot;--read overcharged--domestically.
For the record, you can get a replacement card overnighted to you in Europe. The mistake was obviously BofA's. I was told to specifically talk to &quot;security&quot; when informing them of a planned trip out of country--not just &quot;customer service&quot;. This is also a BofA change in policy I was told.

If you don't notify the bank, they may or may not allow the transaction to go through but rarely will the machine be instructed to eat the card. The transaction will simply be rejected....

Rampant in Europe right now are gangs that gum up the ATM's in touristy areas that eat the cards sort of (they can get them out) and what they do is use modern technology to observe you entering your PIN number (digital cameras, looking over your shoulder etc.)

In the 10 minutes it takes for you to notify your card issuer, they then wipe out your bank account.

Not a reason not to use the ATM's, try to be aware of your surroundings and if it happens to you, try to relax. Eventually you will get your money back.

That is one of the reasons you should consider opening a specific travelling account with one of the internet banks that offer free chequing accounts and free ATM withdrawals.

You keep $1 in the account until you travel. A couple of days before you travel you put your spendig money into the account. This is not money you are paying your bills out of so none of your cheques will turn to rubber. When you get home, you write a cheque back to your main account leaving the $1 in the internet bank for the next trip. Incidentally, if you have bill paying features with your main bank, you can simply when in Europe go into an internet cafe and transfer money to the internet bank as needed!

Ah the wonders of 21st century technology; both pro and con.

&quot;Yeah, dealing with AT&amp;T is an exercise in frustration.&quot;

I think you could add all phone companies. Just like Patrick, I find direct calling from my hotels was the best way to go on our recent trip. We made almost 20 minutes of phone calls to the States from our hotel in Grindelwald. The price tag came to about 11 or 12 euros (or what a US big name hotel charges you just to pick up a phone a make a local call in the US).

I don't know if this is true, but an AT&amp;T guy we met at our hotel in San Mamete said that cell phones had become so prevalent in Europe that the phone rates had been drastically cut for calls, thus the low prices I got for international calls at all my hotels (where I used a phone) on this trip.
((H))

MTT,

The hotel in Grindelwald still made a tidy profit on your phone calls - I live in Switzerland and pay 7 SWISS cents a minute for calls to the US...

But I agree, that calling cards (except for SOME prepaid ones) are a bad deal and I have switched to just using my cell to avoid bad surprises.

Hope this helps,
Andre

&quot;The hotel in Grindelwald still made a tidy profit on your phone calls ...&quot;

Andre. I'm sure they did. Everybody made a tidy profit on me in Switzerland, not to mention Germany, France and Italy. But the great time I had made my sticker shock go away (at least until we get the credit card bill).
((H))

We don't have the problem since we never call back to the USA when on a trip. But we don't have any little children, ill parents, etc. to check up on.

<i>&quot;Everybody made a tidy profit on me in Switzerland... but the great time I had made my sticker shock go away...&quot;</i>

MTT, Switzerland needs more tourists like you :)

More seriously, I subscribe to the same school of thinking: while I try very hard to get the best deals on flights, ground transport and lodging before I leave, once I'm on my trip I concentrate on enjoying myself - and that tends to cost money...

Andre

&quot;concentrate on enjoying myself - and that tends to cost money...&quot;

Good philosophy brother! You never know what the future holds, so spending a little extra (or even a lot extra) on a good bottle of wine or one of those great Swiss gondola rides never causes me concern (yes, the Swiss economy should be fine after our last visit). A European vacation (or any vacation for that matter) is a place to splurge a little more than you normally do.

I'm even coming to grips with my Firenze leather jacket purchase, but the temperatures have to drop quite a bit here in Southern California (the land of permanent global warming) before I have a chance to wear it.
((H))

Not trying to be tooooooooo obvious, but make sure you check the hotel phone rates before you use them.
I got caught out (in the US this time) at a Marriott - off peak call, less than 1 minute to the UK was $15 (one off &quot;connection&quot; fee, operator rate, hotel surcharge blah blah blah, more bs than you can shake a stick at, none of it written down anywhere, they still refused point blank to refund it and the duty manager refused to have anything to do with it).
My point is that the rates vary horrendously.
My parents spend a lot of time in Europe and tend to use locally purchased phone cards as the cheapest option.