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Does anybody else have Viber or Whatsapp charges on their AT&T phone bill?

I got my phone bill for my iPhone and noticed charges of $79.00 for using Viber and/or Whatsapp texting Apps. I have WiFi in my home and AT&T data processing when I'm i.e. in my car driving around and calling my Viber friend. Is that the reason I got charged? I called AT&T and they told me to contact Apple. They said it's a FREE CALL so they deducted it but wondering about my next bill. Can somebody help me?

iPhone 3G, iPhone OS 3.1.3

Posted on Mar 23, 2011 3:32 PM

Reply
53 replies

Mar 25, 2011 6:54 AM in response to swissgirl

Hi,

This is an official representative of Viber Media.

Viber requires 2 things:
1. both sides need to have Viber installed.
2. both sides need to be connected to the internet, 3G or WiFi.

About the cost:
Viber itself is a TOTALLY free service. Payment for 3G internet usage is determined by your cellular company, and this is something we (Viber) cannot control, nor do we benefit from, AT ALL.

Using Viber on WiFi, however, is free for sure, so we don't really understand why AT&T charged you for using WiFi (or even how).

Mar 25, 2011 7:01 AM in response to swissgirl

There are texting scams that allow a company to charge you for a service that you used through your carrier. You basically respond to a text, and a charge appears on your bill. AT&T can block these charges, or can require you to confirm that your really want to make the payment before accepting it. Call AT&T to enable this feature. Could this be what happened?

Mar 25, 2011 7:28 AM in response to Michael Black

Michael Black wrote:
swissgirl wrote:
I have WiFi in my home and AT&T data processing when I'm i.e. in my car driving > around and calling my Viber friend. Is that the reason I got charged?


Bingo - in your car, you do not have wifi so are using the carriers cellular data network.

I don't follow. If you have AT&T on an iPhone you have some number of minutes and a data plan. If you go over the limit on your data plan you will be charged, but that apparently wasn't the case here, as it was a single call, And $79 is not a data plan charge that makes any sense.

Mar 25, 2011 7:40 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Actually, from the OP I don't know whether they were overages or not. If they had the minimum 200MB ($15/month) plan, it could be overage data charges (they never wrote that it was a single call, they just referred to use of).

Regardless of the numbers involved, while the apps (Viber and Whatsapp) may be free to use, if using AT&T's network to use them, the data is not free. Any data sent to or received from AT&T's cellular network is subject to charges - either applying towards your plan limit or in overages. The app using the data is not material to that point (neither, for that matter is Apple - they didn't make the apps in question, and they don't control the carrier's network).

Mar 25, 2011 8:07 AM in response to deggie

I never said nor implied that I disbelieved anything the OP wrote. I just said that if they were using those apps on AT&T's cellular data network, despite being "free to use apps", they were subject to data charges. In the absence of any details or clarifications from the original brief note, I have no idea whether the charges were legit or not, overages or not, whether for a single instance of use or multiple, or anything else about them.

Jun 10, 2011 10:40 AM in response to theViberTeam

Both my sister and I have viber installed. We've been using this app for a while without issue. Until this past Saturday, I called her via Viber for sure. But somehow I got AT&T charge for all 3 hours.

I noticed on the call logs that viber call out get cancelled, but it shows up on AT&T.

I have to settle the case with AT&T and pay them 50+ (original bill was 830!!!).


I will never use Viber again until I know for sure it's absolutely free.


I used the app when I was at home via my own wifi.

Jun 11, 2011 2:08 AM in response to pratana

Hi @pratana


This is an official representative of Viber Media.
The bill you are describing couldn't have been issued by Viber as you're describing, especially when it's WiFi that was used.
Viber works over the internet, and for this reason AT&T 'couldn't have known' that Viber was used.
What probably happened was that your internet connection was temporarily low, so a regular call was placed instead of a Viber call. You can notice the different between the two by the fact that Viber's purple screen switches to iPhone's regular grey interface.


There is unfortunately nothing we (Viber) can do to help.


If you have more questions - please feel free to ask,

Viber.

Jun 11, 2011 12:37 PM in response to theViberTeam

@viber team: I think it's not right that viber switch over to regular call even though I placed the call over Viber app.

The right thing to do is display a warning message to the user or end the call. Switching over without letting the user know can cause user lots of money. How many users constantly look at the screen while talking to notice that it's grey or purple. That's just not user friendly, in this case you advertise that call international free and in this case if it happens to other users and they not looking at the screen which can go black over time, right?


Based on your explanation, it could happen to anyone, I am not looking for you to reimburse me or anything, I just don't want this to happen to any users.


I disagree that Viber team would say nothing you can do. At least you can improve your app to take care of this issue!!!!.

Does anybody else have Viber or Whatsapp charges on their AT&T phone bill?

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