Here’s my iPhone bill, all 15 pages of it. Presumably it will see serious adjustments as a result of this, but as my billing period turns on the 4th of the month, I got this one — for pro-rated charges from June 29-July 4, and then for recurring charges from July 4-August 4. On August 4 I will be billed for recurring charges for August 4-September 4, and any overages or special charges posted in July.

The total is $240.33, which I absolutely can’t figure out. There are two phones on the account, on a $100 ‘family plan’ (plus $29 for the second phone). So I should have been charged $36 for activation for the first, $26 for activation for the second, plus $129 for July, plus (($129/30) * 2) + ($129/31) * 4)) = $25.24 for two days of service in June plus four days in July (AT&T actually charges 1/30 of the monthly rate for pro-rated days). This should be $216.64. They claim $12.86 in ‘Government Fees & Taxes’, $155.99 in usage, and $71.48 in ‘Credits/Adjustments/Other Charges’. None of this makes the slightest bit of sense. I think that the total is correct, but really, decent customer service would seem to require something better than your customer saying ‘Well, I think I might not be getting ripped off here.’

Each page pops up a larger version if you click on it.

Page 1

Name and address and so on. Pretty standard, except that their billing system doesn’t know that this is my first bill, and so I will not ‘notice [their] new bill format’, which they say requires less paper. Given that this bill is 15 pages long, I’d hate to have run into their old bill in a dark alley.

Page 2

This tells me about the late fees they charge in MD, CT, DC, DE, IL, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, NH, NJ, NY, PA, OK, OH, RI, VA, VT, WI, or WV. Given that, for the purposes of this account, I live only in VA, I don’t see why I need that list of state abbreviations. Oh, yeah, I need ‘em because though they print these bills individually for each account, they can’t be arsed to actually customize this stuff.

Note that some of the headings on this page are rendered like this:

<strong>Electronic Check Conversion</strong>

When unrendered HTML makes its way into your bill: classy. At least they nowhere refer to ‘AT&amp;T’, though they do at one point refer to ‘Bill &amp; Payments’.

Page 3

This is their new ‘green’ bill, which uses less paper. None of the figures here have any relation whatsoever to any of their publicized charges.

Page 4

More figures which have no relation to anything else. Apparently my phone is $96 per month, and Nicole’s is $11.99 per month, but this doesn’t take into account data services, only ‘wireless’ services. Got that?

Here are the family plans as published on the Apple website. The AT&T website says much the same thing:

Fifteen pages to charge something that they promote this way. How much do they spend on printing and postage a month?

Page 5-6

Two physical pages, one logical page. It’s the breakdown for Nicole’s phone: $2 for June 29-July 4, and $9.99 for July 4-August 4 for ‘monthly service charges’. Then there’s $4.00 for June 29-July 4 ‘Wireless Data’, and $20 for July 4-August 4, for a total of $35.99. This would seem to be $29.99 for a single full month, which matches the stated terms. Hooray! Something comprehensible!

The activation fee of $26 is also listed, and $2.27 in taxes and things that AT&T would like me to believe are taxes on that, and then $4.00 in Virginia taxes on the whole kaboodle, for a first-month total including activation of $69.26.

Pages 7-10

Detail of charges on Nicole’s phone. The phone detail is okay, except that they use their codes like ‘RM14′ and ‘UNW9′ instead of human language like ‘Unlimited Nights and Weekends’ and ‘Rooty-Tooty Mobile 14′ or whatever the hell RM14 means. They do not provide a translation anywhere.

Pages 8-10 are details of Nicole’s data use from June 29 to July 4. Every time the iPhone connected to anywhere, the time and date and transfer size was recorded by AT&T, so they could provide this useless list. It’s interesting, but doing this has got to cost a fortune. Keep in mind that iPhones are sold only with unlimited data plans. This information is not important. I really do shudder to think what we’re going to get for a full month’s bill.

Pages 11-12

Breakdown for my phone. Voice and data are, note, charged as separate items for maximum confusion.

Pages 13-14

Detail of charges from my phone. I have a lot less data because Nicole had Wi-Fi turned off on her phone for a few days and was thus using the EDGE even at home.

Page 15

More of the ‘green’ bill, making no mention of AT&T at all; it’s ‘Cingular’ several times. Those of you who are good at math will note that as a piece of paper has two sides, and as 15 is an odd number, these two paragraphs — one of which repeats information from page two, and one of which attempts to sell me on THE VERY SERVICE WHICH THIS IS A BILL FOR — require another piece of paper, which is left blank on one side.