AT&T Will Charge You for Uncompleted Calls

One Wired reader got an unpleasant surprise upon testing his new AT&T GoPhone last week: Even if a call hasn't been connected, you are charged for the call after 30 seconds.

Lon McQuillin, a San Mateo, California, writer, decided to test his new pre-paid phone by calling his main cellphone, and it took a little while for it to start ringing. Once the other phone did ring, he ended the call without completing the connection.

Thinking he would be charged only if the call were completed, McQuillin was shocked to find that he'd been billed $0.10 for the call.

It was only subsequently that he discovered AT&T's wireless customer agreement, which clearly states that:

Airtime and other measured usage ("chargeable time") is billed in full minute increments…. Chargeable Time begins for outgoing calls when you press SEND (or similar key) and for incoming calls when a signal connection from the caller is established with our facilities.

AT&T representative Seth Bloom confirmed that this is true for all phone models: The caller will be charged -- even for unanswered calls -- unless you hang up within 30 seconds of hitting the Send button.

This policy gotcha may not be a big deal for those on a data plan (you're already overpaying), but for GoPhone users who are charged 10 cents a minute, those minutes can add up.

There are numerous past instances of carriers billing customers in questionable situations. Verizon was fined $77 million for unfairly charging 15 million customers for accidentally going online without a data plan in October 2010. And remember all those crazy roaming charges when people began traveling abroad with the original iPhone?

Are such charges legal? Certainly. What about ethical? They certainly seem like cheap shots.

The Better Business Bureau's president and CEO Fred Elsberry said that they viewed the practice as a competitive and pricing issue, but not necessarily unethical, since it is fully disclosed.

In the case of AT&T's "30 seconds and you're charged" policy, $0.10 may not be much, but across millions of subscribers over the course of a month, AT&T could be raking in quite a bit of money on short and failed GoPhone calls and overage fees for data-plan subscribers who exceed their monthly minutes.

Unfortunately, exact numbers for that data aren't readily available in any of AT&T's recent sales reports or annual reports (.pdf).