Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Communication Breakdown
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation - Altitude Overshoot; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Requested ATC Assistance / Clarification; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Human Factors; Procedure
First Officer (FO) took down clearance while I monitored. We were given the departure; as filed; via a transition and squawk. So we programmed the altitude and setup the departure frequency noted on the departure.We finished boarding; checklists completed; started engines; received clearance to taxi to the runway. We taxied with no further calls from ATC; secured the cabin for takeoff; switched to tower frequency and performed the PA announcement to the FA's to secure the cabin. We were then cleared for takeoff with NO altitude adjustments from the SID! Takeoff was normal flying runway heading. FO and I noticed about the same time that tower had not switched us over to departure. FO queried tower and his reply was that there was traffic and he would turn us once clear.Tower then gave us a left turn to heading of 180; we turned and were climbing through 7000+ feet when tower came on and said to level at 7;000'! We were already through 8000+ feet and climbing! I reduced power and started leveling and going back to 7000'. We queried ATC about the 7000 feet and he said we were given this in our clearance! We were both a bit dumbfounded as this clearly was not the case and told him so! He then said continue climb to 15;000' as traffic had us in sight. We continued the climb and were instructed to contact departure. No further issue was brought up by the Tower ATC or Departure Control.What could we have done differently? Probably not much given we did what we were instructed to do by Clearance! I suppose from now on I could say cleared for takeoff runway so and so climbing to altitude! That might prompt ATC to confirm our altitude!
There was miscommunications between the flight crew and ATC causing non-compliance with cleared altitude.