Any advice on how to reduce a big ATT&T bill?

[Ridah]

Hey everyone,

I was in Mexico on vacation for a week and had been uploading pics to Facebook while I was at our hotel, during which I thought I was connected to the hotel's wifi but apparently I wasn't. So now I have hundreds of dollars in international data charges. I'm going to call soon in hopes that they will understand the situation and remove the charges, or at the very least reduce the charges.

Has anyone had experience with this particular issue? Or dealing with carriers to reduce your bill in general? Any advice?

[Isgrimnur]

Used to work for them.  The best you're likely able to manage is to ask them to retroactively apply one of the data roaming package.

Given the amounts involved, it will at least require the approval of the manager on duty.  

Best bet is to avoid any sort of confrontational behavior.  Admit that you screwed this up, indicate that you only need it as a one-off solution, and will make sure to make arrangements in the future to either get a package or block the feature in the future.  

[corruptrelic]

When I cancelled my AT&T contract almost two years ago, I had to go through their retentions department and they offered quite a few incentives to stay.

It's possible that they may be able to apply a credit to your account rather than lose you as a customer to offset some of the data charges.

Of course that was almost two years ago, although it's still called retention for a reason.

[The Grue]

You can probably cut costs by taking out the extra T.

[pr0ner]

You can probably cut costs by taking out the extra T.

 

[naednek]

You can probably cut costs by taking out the extra T.

I was about to make the same comment

[Crawley]

Check The Consumerist for stories on the phone roming charges (can just do a search on "roaming"). There are some stories on there from people who unknowingly racked up thousands of dollars in charges. I believe a few people have had success getting the fees waved or at least reduced but its likely a case-by-case basis.

[Harpua3]

A simple punch to the throat should work;). Honestly I had something similar happen before and if you treat them nice enough and keep your cool they should help you out.