If you're an AT&T FirstNet customer and suddenly get hit with a $6,200 charge, the good news is that it's probably a mistake and can be corrected. But actually getting the wrong charge wiped out might not be so easy.
This has now happened at least twice. In December 2024, a Texas police officer received a $6,223 bill with a $6,194 charge for using 3.1GB of data. He said he had unlimited data but was charged incorrectly after moving a line to AT&T's FirstNet service for first responders. He called AT&T and went to an AT&T store but only got the bill reversed after contacting the AT&T president’s office.
An AT&T spokesperson told Ars at the time that it was "investigating to determine what caused this system error." But AT&T never revealed exactly what caused it, and now another FirstNet user has gone through an almost identical ordeal.