"I am shocked and furious! I cannot believe AT&T would let me dial an international number eith out a plan and not kowing it was over $3.99 per minute."

That's a fairly naive assumption. It's the customer's responsibility to know the rates. I agree $3.99 is ridiculous, but AT&T had no way of knowing you were ignorant of the charges, especially when even you state you continued to call at this rate.

And as someone very accurately pointed out below, this isn't the first bill you received with the charges listed.

Good luck switching to Verizon though. I''m pretty certain they have the same policy.