been renewing the same family plan contract with AT&T since 2001, and before that we were grandfathered in from Cingular in VA.
5 years ago my family moves away to an area not covered by AT&T, cancel plan, no term fees, all Early Term Fees (ETF) waived. I remained in the area and carried over the entire contract to my own name condensed into one single phone #.
I moved a few months ago to an area ATT does not cover. ATT does not have a retail store within 30 miles, nor a tower within 20. before I knew about this I attempted to call and modify my area code/phone number to a new local #, they said they couldnt because my billing postal code was in a non-service rate exception zone that they did not service.
I call back the following week after signing a contract with Sprint (best in area) to cancel my decade long service with AT&T. They tell me it will be $90 term fee due. They tell me they will not waive fee. they say I do get phone service and there is a tower only 1 mile from my house. In 2 directions 1 miles is WATER, the other is farm land, and the other is a town which doesn't even know how to spell ATT. Even ATT own website lists their nearest tower at 20 miles away. I ask for the address of the tower, he says it doesn't have one he can provide, I ask him for a GPS coordinate of Long/Lat so I can accurately compare it to my house, again he refuses.
I call back again and speak to a supervisor, he tells me they do not waive fees for people that move into non-serviced areas, I ask him about the supposed tower 1 mile away, he is oblivious to this, telling me i am in an unserviced zone. but I still gotta cough up the fee. I ask him to calculate my fee per their terms, I ask him how many months in ten years, at $4 removed per month off term fee (per their policy), how is that supposed to mean I still owe almost $100. No answer. How about the fact your Rep LIED to me about the tower, no answer. I ask for a higher up from him, I get a 1st name, have to ask for the last name, he tells me he doesn't speak to people. He just oversees the 20+ "supervisors" at this one specific "call center"
refuses to be of any assistance. just reading off his queue cards.
I call back the next day to terminate service, the rep asks where did i move to, I told her the billing address on file is my new/current address; her answer is "oh, but there's a tower only a couple miles from you." I asked her to not say another word except to terminate my service, her reply is "ok but the tower..." I cut her off, and tell her again to cancel service and just process the request, I had already gone through all I needed to deal with regarding ATT's lack of customer service.
End result is ten years and over $9, 000 paid in service, and they tell me (and I quote one of their supervisor) that I am "trying to scam my way out of my contract by claiming I moved to an area that is covered but not getting service."
Always had good reception when in metro/large city areas, but once you get out to small towns and living in a zipcode that covers OVER 100 miles, totally unreliable. I've worked in customer service for over 12 years, including the past 5 years in one of Forbes 500's top 100 corporations. I will never consider going back to AT&T, and you can be sure I'm going to share this information with my network of colleagues throughout the entire east coast.

We have a family plan with 4 members through ATT. In addition, we pay $4.99 per person, per month for 200 text messages each. Almost never, have any of us gone over the 200 messages per month. Last statement I was upset with my daughter for 466 messages charged at $0.10 per message for each message over 200, 0r $26.60. Then I had to yell at myself for 349 texts or $14.90. However, when I looked closer at the bill, all the text messages for 2 months were added up and billed as if they occurred within 1 billing cycle. At most, we were over by no more than 66 messages total for the 2 months, but when 2 months worth of texting are billed as occurring in 1 month, ATT could fraudulently bill us an extra $34.90. When finally brought to there attention, they did refund the texting charges for that billing cycle. But who knows how often other people have been bilked by ATT overcharges?