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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

I lived in a building that had an exclusive deal with AT&T. Problem was they were out of "connections," and couldn't hook me up. I only had my cellphone hotspot for months, until I threatened to write a letter to the FCC and CPUC about their "monopolistic" practices in my building. They got a tech out the next day.

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I had the same experience in SF. AT&T tried to sell me 28Mbit for $75/month in SoMa and the building didn't allow me to bring Monkeybrains. They just said no and told me they had an exclusivity agreement with AT&T. Called Comcast, they told me they can't because the address looks like a business address despite being residential.

I called the AT&T representative they got me in touch with. I told them about how what they are doing is illegal and they can't limit me to use this etc.

They backed down. Gave me free cable, 50% off, waived the installation fee and came and installed it in a day. Their previous estimate for an installation was two to three weeks.

You showed them that this tactic works, and have rewarded them for anti-competitive behavior. I wish I could say you've won in this situation, but at what cost to the rest of us?

This. Reading this and the original comment is really weird. "They tried to lock me in, but I showed them by locking myself in _faster_!"

A big reason lockin is bad is because they can screw you on price, right? So getting a fair price is, to some degree, beating lockin?

It depends on whether you only care about yourself, or think a little bit about others in your situation too. While the poster got himself a nicer deal, taking it only incentivizes the company to continue with this practice. After all, per one HNer who can negotiate a better arrangement, they'll have a hundred schmucks who will take the default.

Now, I understand that in real life, it's not an easy, abstract choice - you have "only human" issues playing part, like being tired and wanting to get the Internet situation sorted out ASAP. So to be clear - I'm not blaming the poster for choosing this way. But it was a suboptimal decision - and the kind of decision that lets schemes like this exist in the first place, so I wouldn't call it "beating lock-in".

I think that, for the vast majority of renters, getting a discount is about as much as you can hope for. We would all love to have the time and resources to take the telecoms to court and set a precedent, but 90% of us (probably more in SF and among Hacker News readers) don't have the luxury of doing without the Internet to make a stand.

It's certainly better than just going along with it and waiting for installation.

But there's nothing about this tactic that prevents future action against AT&T. If anything, gp now has more advantageous legal standing as a customer and denied them the added revenue which was the point of the monopoly in the first place - especially if they still have to pay off the landlord.

GP's marginal cost to AT&T is probably zero, so they're still getting some free money over what would happen if GP fought a bit more. So in a way, it is a wasted opportunity - instead of dealing the enemy a powerful blow, GP only scratched them a bit.

It's not the job of the individual consumer to fight lock-in for other people. That is the job of the government. If we have regulation against this bs, I'll report problems. Otherwise, I'll deal with them.

I'd have gone with Monkeybrains

You can't unless your landlord agrees to have a antenna put on their roof.

If only more folks knew how the Telecoms/Utilities dreaded the public utilities commissions.

If the FCC and PUCs could do marketing, that'd be awesome, but I'm sure some corporate crony politician (or even judge) would shut that down...

This seems like a good use case for a PAC. Maybe you could get Netflix et al. to pitch in?

That's a PAC I could get behind

Did you skip mailing the FCC/CPUC because you didn't want to piss off the landlord? I mean, you may have gotten on their naughty list either way, and it's important for the FCC to get more such complaints to take action.

You should have filed a complaint either way. Filing a legitimate complaint with the FCC will get their attention ASAP. I've done it before with my ISP (RCN) and all of a sudden I was getting executive support and a much better deal. It works.

I had this same problem with AT&T! Wasn't until I raised a childish stink on Twitter (eye roll) that it got resolved.

Twitter is amazing for getting companies to fix problems. They absolutely hate bad publicity and will usually go out of their way to fix the issue, or at least push you into a DM with them to hide it. FCC complaints also go a long ways.

In Poland, where Twitter is much less popular, Facebook seems to serve that role too. A telcom cheated you out of half of your prepaid? Good luck sorting that out by calling their support. Post a comment on their Facebook page? They'll reimburse you in a day.

That said, I'm having a hard time understanding this obsession over social media. I'm pretty sure that if most companies simply ignored complaints made over Twitter or Facebook, it wouldn't hurt them in any way.

I've noticed the same thing, they get so many complaints on twitter and facebook they could ignore them all like they do phone calls and no one would care

I think you're missing the point... It is bad publicity if your followers read a negative thing you say about a company. But it is good publicity if that company publicly fixes it. They essentially turn customer service into free marketing (so maybe its intentional that its the more effective than other methods of communication for receiving customer support?).

Exactly this. Sure most might go unnoticed if they ignore, but all it takes is one to go viral and really be bad. That's the kinda risk they're trying to minimize, plus yeah it looks great when you see a company "go out of their way" consistently.

"exclusive deals" are sham just call up the competitor.

The whole premise of this discussion is that the competitor isn't an option in these situations. Read the article.

I have found in many cases that the rental property is simply bluffing. Just call up the competitor first.

My landlord told me about his exclusive deal that will give me cheap AT&T connection. I simply called up Comcast and they gave me an internet connection that was cheaper.

They probably solved the issue by pulling someone else's plug out and putting yours in.

Repeat every few weeks until number of customers drops under number of available ports in router/switch/gizmo.

That's likely vastly more expensive than installing new equipment.

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