AT&T Quietly Adds Charges To All Contract Cell Plans 338
guttentag writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T Mobility, the second-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., has added a new monthly administrative fee of 61 cents to the bills of all of its contract wireless lines as of May 1, a move that could bring in more than a half-billion dollars in annual revenue to the telecom giant. An AT&T spokeswoman said the fee covers 'certain expenses, such as interconnection and cell-site rents and maintenance.' The increased cost to consumers comes even though AT&T's growth in wireless revenue last year outpaced the costs to operate and support its wireless business. The company has talked of continuing to improve wireless profitability. Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins noted that the new administrative fee is a key component for accelerating revenue growth for the rest of the year. He said the fee should add 0.30 of a percentage point to AT&T's 2013 revenue growth; he predicts total top-line growth of about 1.5%. Normally, consumers could vote with their wallets by taking their business elsewhere. AT&T would be required to let customers out of their contracts without an early termination fee if it raised prices, but it is avoiding this by simply calling the increase a 'surcharge,' effectively forcing millions of people to either pay more money per month or pay the ETF."
Ahhh at&t (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, so no kidding:
A while back my company was trying to resolve a billing issue.
We were under "foundation" billing. Whatever that means.
So the customer service dude on the phone gave us a URL where we could check our "foundation" billing. In this web portal, we were able to see all the other foundation accounts bills.
As in detailed bills of other people and companies, including call logs. There were thousands of these, all in PDF for the download. With everything you'd expect on a bill, like name, address, phone number, ammount due. I suppose anyone could have seen our bill too.
It reminded me of the at&t ipad "hacker" case.
Evil Company (Score:4, Interesting)
AT&T overcharges many customers on every bill anyway. I have to call in every month to receive a credit to my account because of their business practice of overcharging and hoping customers don't notice. I've been an AT&T customer a few times over the years, and EVERY time they do this. It's not a mistake on their end, it's a deceptive business practice.
This new "surcharge" is just the tip of the ice-berg of AT&T's deceptive business practices. I know people who work there and most of them I've spoken with actually agree with me, thought they wouldn't go so far as to call the company "evil" as much as greedy and mis-managed.
Re:Surcharge (Score:5, Interesting)
AT&T would be required to let customers out of their contracts without an early termination fee if it raised prices, but it is avoiding this by simply calling the increase a 'surcharge'
I love the way there's always a loophole!
There's not. This is blatantly illegal and a breach of contract.
Not the only ones (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you can find instances of every carrier sneaking rate hikes onto customers with contracts. The contract only helps the carrier, never ever the consumer.
Thankfully, my contract is up next month. I'll be off to T-mobile no-contract plan.
Re:Surcharge (Score:5, Interesting)
This is because snail mail is often used (still, amazingly) for important things for which they have to respond.
This doesn't surprise me at all. Why I just used snail mail on Monday to send a letter informing a management company that they were in breach of contract and that they had 7 days (by state law) to rectify the situation or they would be legally responsible for all sorts of damages, blah blah blah. Anyway. I had been calling and complaining (and even showing up in person) to said management company for 20 days and they did nothing. It wasn't until I filled out a form to file in court and sent it certified mail that they did anything. And let me tell you, they did something to rectify the breach that very day. Why? Because I had a little stamped piece of paper from the post office saying that they most certainly hand delivered my notice of breach of contract and the court system absolutely loves signed receipts. You can take your piece of paper (the one you sent, and the one you received) in and show a judge. You can't take your tier one support call into court unless you recorded it. Even then a tier 1 support person is probably not likely to get the company into as much hot water as a letter.
Re:Surcharge (Score:5, Interesting)
Fine, send it certified. Let them ignore it at their own risk. I'm sure the courts would look kindly on that.
Re:Surcharge (Score:5, Interesting)
The next month I get a bill for about $600 in long distance. When I look at the bill, they were charging me about 60 cents a minute for long distance and several dollars a minute for international. When I called about this, they said that these were the default charges because I was not on a plan. I told them that I was signed up for a plan the previous month and the details of the plan. They said "I''m sorry, that plan is not available in your area". I said that is not my problem. I was sold that plan and that is the plan I want and nobody even bothered to call to tell me that the plan they sold me is not available and would I be interested in an alternate plan. No, they just quietly put me on no plan at all and let the charges go. They were completely unapologetic and just said that the plan is not available and offered me a couple of options which were about twice as expensive. In the end, they refused to honor the plan they sold me and refused to even reprice the previous bill back to the plan that they had sold me. They knocked like $100 off of the bill expecting me to pay 80% of the cost for a mistake which was 100% their fault. I said I was not going to pay it and that is when they started trotting out the "we'll report you to collections" line. I told them that that was fine, I had just moved and I simply can't afford to pay for your mistake at this time. Finally, they agreed to put me on monthly payments to pay them for their mistake. As soon as I had them paid back, I switched companies and will never, ever deal with them again.
Unfortunately, since that time, most of the other wireless carriers have joined them on the list of companies I won't deal with. Pretty soon i will be forced into Luddite status by the fact that there are no wireless companies left that have not completely screwed me over.
Re:Surcharge (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, and that sort of thing would be enforceable by the contract if AT&T didn't breach it first. Class action suits are fair game now.