If you’re an AT&T FirstNet customer and suddenly get charged $6,200, the good news is that it’s probably a mistake and can be fixed. But in reality, clearing a false accusation may not be so easy.
This has happened at least twice now. In December 2024, a Texas police officer received a $6,194 charge plus a bill of $6,223 for using 3.1GB of data. He said he had unlimited data but was incorrectly charged after moving a line to AT&T’s FirstNet service for first responders. He called AT&T and went to an AT&T store, but only got the bill back after contacting the AT&T president’s office.
An AT&T spokesperson told Ars at the time that it was “investigating to determine what caused this system error.” But AT&T never explained what caused it, and now another FirstNet user has gone through almost the same problem.
On Monday this week, an active-duty military member from Florida emailed us and said he was “experiencing the exact same problem with AT&T.” The man, who preferred that we not publish his name, showed us a bill with a $6,196 charge for about 3.1GB of data usage.
$2 per megabyte
The bill states that he had FirstNet Unlimited service from January 19 to February 14. There was also a note of service change on January 19 and the addition of “FN Data PPU charged at $2.00 per MB for 3,098 MB” was increased to $6,196. This was almost identical to the Texas man’s December 2024 bill in which the $6,194 line item was listed as “Data Payment Per Use 3,097MB at $2.00 per MB.”
We contacted AT&T on Tuesday for details about the Florida military member’s bill. We asked AT&T if it ever figured out what caused a similar billing issue in December 2024, whether it made any changes to prevent it from happening again, and details about what caused the new error.
AT&T didn’t answer our specific questions, but it fixed the bill within a few hours. “It was a huge relief,” the FirstNet customer told us later that day, adding that AT&T “completely eliminated my bill today.”
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