You’ll need a lawyer to go over your iPhone bill

We’re big fans of itemized bills. There’s a certain level of comfort in being able to go through your activity log and possibly pick out inaccurate items. When we just see a lump sum saying “please pay this amount,” we tend to get a bit skeptical. However, there is a fine line between having an itemized bill and having a log of every time we access a data network. That’s what iPhone customers are seeing, though: bills of up to 300 pages chronicling nearly every button they pressed during the month.

“It’s this mind-numbingly long itemized list that tells you nothing,” Kuchera said. He said the bill refers to almost every item simply as “data” that costs nothing under the unlimited access plan.

So while details are nice, reams and reams of paper are not. If nothing else, it kills a ton of trees — and in no way are we environmentalists. That’s how bad it is.

AT&T, though, doesn’t see the problem:

It’s no different than with any other bill for any other device or any other service that we offer,” said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T’s wireless division in Atlanta. “If you do a lot of wireless data and consume a lot of bandwidth, that part of your bill is going to be bigger.”

At least customers can opt to receive less detailed bills. We wonder, though, if the only options are super-duper detailed, or just a number saying how much to pay.

This is why we’re big on electronic billing. They send you an e-mail when your statement is ready, and you can see as much or as little details as you want to scroll through. Plus, it’s one less piece of physical mail to sort through.

[Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

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1. AT&T changes iPhone billing method | Prepaid Reviews Says
   

   [...] yes, to a certain degree, we’re on board with itemized bills. However, when those bills reach hundreds of pages, we’re more inclined to think that sending an itemized bill might be more of a burden than a [...]

   
   Posted on August 23rd, 2007 at 10:04 am

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