If you’re an early adopter of the iPhone, one facet of it might have dismayed you – the way you received your bill from AT&T. Those highly detailed statements have detailed every text message, phone call and Web access by users, often resulting in massive tomes that run to pages andpages, to the extent that they have to be delivered in boxes.
But no more. AT&T has announced that, starting next month, instead it will send a summary of charges. That will only change if the customer requests a detailed statement.
Many users have criticized the excessive use of paper, with every, often meaningless activity on the account shown. However, that had no bearing on AT&T’s decision to send billing summaries rather than the full bills, according to company spokesperson Lauren Garner.
“This was something we planned all along,” she said. Evidently the company had been testing the summary statement in the Northeast before rolling it out nationally.
iPhone customers were informed of the change by text on Wednesday. Customers can also choose to receive no paper statement at all, simply viewing and paying their bill online.
For now, other AT&T wireless customers will receive detailed bills. But if they change their service plan after September 28, that will change to simple bill summaries, with detailedstatements being available instead for an extra $1.99 month. New customers who sign up after that time will also receive the summaries.
