I know it's a stupid question, but...just how do you mix up 4 and 6 on a phone? If you're not looking before pressing, you should feel the edge of the phone. If you are looking...uhh, idiot moment?

The fingers you have used to dial are too fat, to obtain a special dialing wand please mash the keypad with your palm...now.

Sorry, first thing that came to my mind, and not a reflection of what I think of the OP, I swear!

He managed to dial the wrong number twice?

Honestly, I don't see a problem with this. You may not have meant to do it, but you did, and there is a charge for doing so.

It's like if you break something by accident in a store. You didn't mean to, but you still need to pay for it. Not the best analogy I'm sure, but it's early. So cut me some slack eh?

@Aquasol: I was wondering this myself.

I don't understand why he wants refunds. I mean, I get he likes his money and wants to keep it, but next time, be careful which numbers you're dialing!

Could be worse.

Midway through my (thankfully now dead and buried) secretarial career, I got a temp job at a branch of a firm that was based in the UK. The first time I tried to dial a number in London, I got in trouble. Visualize dialing 9 to get an outside line, then 1 to access international dialing, then getting distracted by a request from the boss, and forgetting I already dialed the 1... what's that spell? Yup. I hung up as soon as I realized what had happened, only to have four policemen show up about an hour later wondering what was wrong.

I did fortunately manage to distract the boss from my stupid mistake by pointing out the, uh, "promptness" of the police response.

@Kyin:

It's a bit different than breaking something - if AT&T handles 411 in house they aren't out any money.

Does AT&T outsource their 411 calls - maybe THEY got charged for each call and that's why they are unwilling to refund them.

While I think a blocking feature would be good, be glad that AT&T bothered to give a courtesy credit. They weren't the ones making calls to directory assistance.

@speedwell, avatar of snark:

Isn't the emergency number in the UK 999 or 112, not 911?

@Aeron: Speedwell worked in the US, the main headquarters were in the UK. Dialing hilarity ensues.

It's like that time I was trying to dial 411, and I dialed 911 by mistake - twice. The cops showed up at my door and yelled at me for being a clumsy idiot*. It got my blood pressure up, too. No one ever made that right

* - this story was made up for effect and never actually happened.

It makes sense that AT&T might do this in order to avoid people trying to game the system and get free directory assistance calls by pretending that they made the calls accidentally

Maybe.

If only they had some way of seeing call duration to verify his story...

(sorry, I couldn't help it - there's no reason for them to not believe him, you can't get crap for assistance in the time it would take him to realize and hang up, assuming everything he said is true)

@speedwell, avatar of snark: At the college I work for/go to (most of the time), we use 9 for outside line and 8 for long distance. I imagine it's for this exact reason (and by exact, I mean they're afraid you, specifically are gonna come screw up their phones ;) ).

My school also owns the local iteration of 867 5309. They refused to let me have it as an office extension.

So...

AT&T refunded him.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Yeah the college I work for/go to on and off has long distance keyed by 8 instead, I imagine for that reason

@Kyin:

Those policies are also not enforceable. Shop owners take advantage of the public's ignorance in this matter, as they are required to have retailer's insurance to cover incidents like this. Mostly, the signs serve merely to make people more careful while in the store, or so that they will be aware of any damage to merchandise (as opposed to someone breaking something and leaving it in the aisle). Rarely is it an excuse to take money from the consumer who feels guilty; when I was 15, I broke a figurine in a Hallmark store and brought it to the register, prepared to pay for it, only to be told that I did not have to do so. I first heard about the necessity of retailer's insurance in the book Imponderables some years later.

That having been cleared up, I concur. I would say it's analogous to drunk texting your boss because he's in your phone under "Bonehead" with a sexual message meant for "Boyfriend"; you didn't mean to, but you screwed up, and now you have to deal with the fallout.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Where I used to work, 911 dialed Security, who would then conference in a 911 operator, if necessary.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: As a rule, if you misdial the emergency services, stay on the line and state that you misdialled. Otherwise as you found out, they'll try to trace you anyway which wastes more of their time.

Directory Assistance service is contracted out to a third-party. It's not AT&T levying the charges, so they can't just willy-nilly take them off the bill. Well, I mean they could (and they did) but they're not required to do so. Either way, somebody paid for those two calls.

Consequently, I think you can also dial *2 on most cell phones to reach customer service. No confusing it with 411 there!

Dialing 411 by accident one time might be one thing, but twice? I question this.

Also, an easy solution is to program AT&T customer service into your phone, so you dial it from a menu, rather than by punching in the number, if you have this problem often.

Another thing: Any time I've needed to have a 411 charge refunded (once, they connected me to a completely wrong number before I could stop the computer) I've just called 411 back, both to get the right number and to ask for a refund of the first call. They usually oblige, possibly because it's AT&T's in-house 411? No clue, but only one call was on my bill :D

@twophrasebark: Only a courtesty credit - not a normal credit. Wait...huh?

Wait hold on, there is something very simple here that I am not understanding.

On my phone (Sprint), I dial the number, and then I hit connect to activate the call. If I just type in 411, look at the screen, and hit end without ever hitting call, the call never goes through and I'm not charged for anything.

Was this guy blind dialing? Or just blind? I can't honestly think of a valid reason to accidentally call almost ANY number except through laziness or maybe force of habit. In neither of those instances should he get a refund for the call.

@Sockatume: That happened like once a month in an old job I had. 911 kept threatening to bill us for false calls. But yeah, stay on the line if you do call.

@josephbloseph: Since every thing on a cellphone is "pay as you dial" ATT should have a mechanism in place to allow you to opt out of 411, as they do to access the internet. I turned off my internet access on their website. If you ever pushed a button (other than dial) on an ATT cellphone, it wants to put you online, for their $$$ per kb service.

@Radi0logy: He dialed 411 and then hit the button to connect the call, and then realized that it was 411, not 611 like he meant to dial. It happens. People don't look carefully, they just don't pay attention sometimes.

@chipslave: Umm, don't you dial 011 to get to international switchboards? "1" just gets to numbers outside the area code.

800-GOOG-411

Free and easy.

@GitEmSteveDave_DeathPanelist: That was one of the classic episodes! Well done

@GitEmSteveDave_DeathPanelist: I am not a lawyer, but from my dealings with telephone systems that may be a tad illegal. All phones should go directly to 911 emergency when dialed, not to a liaison. I can imagine there would be several fines attached to that or, better, should someone try to dial 911 and the security people didn't answer the phone, failed to report the emergency for whatever reason, or were incapacitated, I'm sure there would be some litigation involved.

Not that it matters since you don't work there anymore. :P

@speedwell, avatar of snark: When we were kids, my sister asked for the movie theater phone number. I jokingly said "nine eleven" and she stupidly dialed it. I am still upset that I was the one who got in trouble.

Okay, I know we're all laughing at the OP for the strange misdial, but what I'm wondering is, why can't AT&T be sophisticated enough to only charge for 411 service that was actually used? They're keeping track of call times, and could easily have the 411 charge kick in at, say, 2 seconds, or however long it minimally takes to make a query.

Depending on the type of mobile device, you *can* block certain inbound and outbound calls. If you want to avoid making this same mistake now for the third time, I would suggest looking at your phone's manual to see if there are any call restriction features.

I know 10 years ago they were archaic, leaving you with options to restrict calls to the handset only or some similar option and that was it. Now I've seen devices capable of blocking by the number. Although, smartphones tend to have a more robust call restriction array of options. (Think the intended / target audience - business users)

@Kyin: I agree. At least with the first part. 411 is a big money-maker for AT&T. It's just business folks. Plus, 4 and 6 are nowhere near each other on a phone pad.

@mindshadow: Well, the problem is that most of the internal phones could not dial out, only receive calls/call internal numbers.

@Kyin: He claims he didn't speak to anyone on the 411 line. If that's true then he didn't receive any benefit from the mistaken call and AT&T didn't have to allocate any personnel or resources to handle his call he and shouldn't have to pay for it.

@tmlfan81: Darn, I mean to say "restrict to phonebook only". I used to do this all the time when I worked for Cingular, now AT&T. We would deploy dozens of handsets and restrict the callers to company lines only.

Prime example was when we sold a landscaping company about 25 phones for their fleet. They had a problem with their workers calling back home to their families (not being racist here - in Mexico) and racking up tons of charges for overages. By restricting the handset to only what was in the phonebook, the workers couldn't misuse company property.

@Aquasol: I have a touchscreen phone and I misdial with alarming frequency.

(My touchscreen has a film cover to protect it, but I wear sunblock every day and a shocking lot of sunblock ends up on the touchscreen cover, and I seem to misdial more often when it's sunblocky. Even if I try to wipe it off quickly first.)

I'm glad to see that these comments are almost universally not impressed with this complaint--I was starting to think the whole world had gone crazy. As others have pointed out, a)how do you accidentally dial 411 multiple times, especially when a cell phone displays the numbers you've dialed and you have to confirm to send the call, b)it's understandable that AT&T wouldn't want to go through the hassle of determining whether he really received 411 assistance or not, especially if those services are contracted to a third party, and c)THEY STILL GAVE YOU YOUR MONEY BACK. In order for stirring tales of consumer abuse like this one to have a more appropriate home, I'll soon be starting a new site at unreasonablecomplaintsthatcustomerserviceresolvedanyway butImstillupsetabout.com . I look forward to hearing more from Stephen.

Mistakes are sometimes made, and I'd be annoyed that I pressed the wrong number twice, too. But I wouldn't expect the company to compensate me for my error.

I managed to dial 411 twice last week and lost $4 over it. On pre-pay (gophone) I call 611 pretty often to renew data/messaging.

So I was sitting at work, and said "oh, I better check my data package to make sure it doesn't run out, better call". Cell coverage is questionable here but calling 611 is an IVR so it's good enough. I picked up the phone and dialed 411. I don't why, I never use 411 but I did. Held the phone to my ear, but the call failed. Oh well, redialed and saw my mistake but by the time I hung up the call had connected and was at 1 second. First had gone far enough to get billed, and second call of course was billed. $4 gone.

Everyone makes mistakes at times, but this is a rip off.

Also, shouldn't the headline read "AT&T: Sorry Your Finger Slipped, We Usually Would Not Refund Your Money, But We'll Do It This Time as a Courtesy"?

@larrymac: Not sure how this helps the op, being as he was never trying to get 411 to begin with, and AT&T won't let him disable their 411, so it's not like he could disable it, use google instead and save himself the problem of accidentally dialing 411.

@Aquasol: Maybe he was driving.

@K-Bo: It was more of a tangentially related PSA.

@coren: They do. The telephone switching system generates detailed billing data that includes call duration down to the second.

Besides that, using 411 on two occasions is hardly "gaming the system". Gaming the system would be calling 411 several times per month on a regular basis and then claiming you fat fingered it each time.

@harvey_birdman: Yes, but does that mean that he connected? If he hung up while it was still ringing, I'd say give him his money back. If it connected, he bought the service.

@bennilynn: No service was rendered therefore no charge should be made. It doesn't matter if the service is contracted out somewhere.

That is like saying I'm entitled to pay for a tank of gas because I just happened to drive through the parking lot of an Exxon.

@Segador: I would. No service rendered means one is not morally entitled to pay for said non-rendered service.