AT&T Now Charging You an Extra $2/Month For Not Using Enough Long Distance | Hacker News Reader

AT&T Now Charging You an Extra $2/Month For Not Using Enough Long Distance

dslreports.com

143 pointsnextparadigms57 comments

AT&T is the most scandalous business in the world. Recently due to the shitty economy my family shut down our family owned and operated business and the only company still giving us a hard time about canceling a contract is AT&T.

They said we agreed to extend the contract over the phone. We asked if we called them or they called us. They said they called us. When we asked who the spoke to, they said they didnt have name, but the person claimed to be the owner. I asked the rep if my dog answered and barked would they extend the contract and the rep said, "If it was interpreted to be a yes then he was authorized to extend."

Aren't they required to record the confirmation if it is over the phone? And if so, they should be able to replay it to you.

For example, if you try to do a balance transfer over the phone, they explicitly read you they will start recording and then read you the terms and ask if you accept. If you do accept, they can pull it up later.

Someone from a 3-letter government agency needs to put a stop to this. If the only way you can avoid this fee is to use more long distance than you normally would, that seems beyond bad business. It's very likely criminal. As an aside, I'm 30 and I've lived on my own for more than 10 years. I've never had a landline and have no plans to get one.

What do you think is criminal about it?

Isn't that some sort of forced sale/racket? "call long distance or else" does not sound like good business.

A Forced interaction generally requires one be deprived of not interacting. E.g., when a mugger says "your money or your life" you are being deprived of saying "no thanks" and walking away (getting shot counts as an interaction).

Why does getting billed not count as an interaction ?

Because you can cancel your service.

Yeah, but the US government has sort of established landline service as a quasi-right. They have gone to great lengths over the years to ensure service gets delivered to extremely small communities in extremely remote places. If you cancel your landline service with AT&T, I hope there is another provider that you can transition towards.

You can cancel your service, sure. But if you need a landline, then you're forced to go to another provider who does the same exact pricing trick. So there really is no choice at all.

If "another provider" is not marginally more beneficial, why would you switch? Or put another way, how would "another provider" compete for market share if it is not marginally more beneficial? Granted, the competitive process is, sadly, subject to all manner of governmental interference.

I mention this for a reason. Thoreau said, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." Before we start hacking, we need to be clear on which are the branches and which are the roots.

The corporations are the roots, and the govt represents the branches. Seeing it the other way around is delusional.

Because you get tempted by alluring advertising, or by false promises. Ultimately there is no good reason to switch if they're all the same -- but that's the way quasi-monopolies like it. They aren't interested in competition. They're interested in sucking more money out of their existing customers -- much easier!

Don't mistake Adam Smith's concept of hundreds of competitive small businesses with two or three corporations dominating an entire industry. The rules of capitalism -- real capitalism -- no longer apply. It's corporatism. Their way or the highway.

For a local land line, "another provider" might not exist. In many cases, T has a monopoly on the last mile. This is why local phone service has historically been so strictly regulated. I'm surprised this is at all legal, given that history...but I suppose rules change, and T has a lot of politicians in their pocket.

The good news is that it will probably hurt T more than help in the long run. A lot of people who have held on to land lines may begin to think about whether the cost is worth it when the price goes up by 10%, or so. There are an awful lot of superior alternatives to land lines these days, except in the most rural of areas. Even my parents now use their cell phones more than their land line...they might even turn off the land line with this change, since they use their cell phones for long distance calls.

The worst possible interpretation of this policy is, "AT&T is now charging $2/mo extra for land line service". I don't like that, but it doesn't sound criminal.

No, that's the best interpretation of the policy, but it's not what they're doing: apparently they're only charging $2/month if you don't call enough for AT&T's taste.

What difference does that make? How is that not strictly better than charging $2/mo no matter what? And thus if raising rates by $2/mo isn't "criminal", how could this be?

The thing about this is that it's somewhat dishonest. They have an advertised price, but then there's an additional fee if you don't buy additional services. It's like going into a store and buying a box of pasta for $2, and then getting charged $3 because you didn't buy some sauce along with it. Sure there was fine print beside the price saying that's the price when bought with sauce, and otherwise a $1 non-sauce-usage fee applies, but the reality is that they're counting on people to not read their bills too carefully.

Let's think about it this way. AT&T is now charging $2 a month to have landline service. They will waive the fee for customers who use more than $2 a month in long distance charges.

It's not a customer friendly policy, as it just serves to squeeze $2 from customers who aren't using more services. But it's not criminal to add a service fee(as much as I hate it as well).

Heard at the grocery store: "You only bought 1 apple so we're charging you for the price of two because of gas prices."

It's a cost that can't be quantified to the customer. Why not just jack the monthly cost instead of tacking on a ghost charge?

You could look at it as they're charging everybody $2 a month, but offering a $2 a month credit to their best and most active customers. Looked at like that it doesn't sound to bad at all.

Monopoly pricing power. That's what's illegal about it

Historically, it would have been. Local phone service was strictly regulated for most of its existence. That's not the case so much these days, partly because so many alternatives exist. But, I'm confident there are still some rural areas where a land line from AT&T is the only reliable means of communication.

To be fair to T, those rural lines are the most expensive they maintain, and they no longer have as many sheep in major metropolitan areas to subsidize the rural phone users (who get those lines for the same price as the densely packed city folk who are super cheap to provide service to). So, I can imagine a valid argument for this additional fee.

But, given the level of evil of AT&T, and their historic abuse of monopoly powers (independent ISPs were destroyed by T a decade ago, for instance), and their apparent ability to get away with it right under the noses of regulators...well, I suspect this is not at all a response to any real cost change at T. I reckon it's just T being the same old T. Abuse of their monopoly, as far as the law allows (and then a little bit extra), is built right into their character.

Given ATT's role in warrantless wiretapping fiasco they pretty much are a 3 letter government agency.

"(...) traditional landline users (all six of you left)"

Is having a landline so old-fashioned in the US? It's not the first time that I see this kind of comment, but it's shocking to me, since for most ISPs in many countries you must have a landline if you want some kind of Internet service, whether it's xDSL or cable.

I have cable internet (Time Warner), I don't have a landline.

It's pretty rare for people in their twenties, but more common amongst older generations.

Usually you're forced to get a landline if you want DSL. I've never seen a cable company force a landline on you. You can also get around the landline restriction from the phone company if you get a fiber connection though that's not offered in all areas.

I have Comcast and they basically force you to get a "land line" through them (although I guess it's closer to VOIP?) for a cheaper package. Mine isn't plugged into a phone though, I don't even know what the phone number is.

The only reason why I have a landline (I'm 33) is because I have kids. In an emergency, the last thing you need to worry about is whether or not you can get a cell signal at home.

That being said, we just moved and my wife just reminded me that neither of us actually know what the new number is - we've lived here for almost a month. So, we still rely on our cell phones.

I personally wouldn't have a phone at all if it weren't for my job requiring a personal cell phone (cheap-asses won't provide a company cell phone) -- and I have 2 kids. The whole "emergency" thing never sat well with me as a reason for a phone or to carry a cell phone.

We had a really bad storm a few years back when my first kid was only about 3-4 months old. That house was at the low-point for the block, so water would pool in our backyard when there was a lot of rain (and the city has horrible storm sewers). Our house has a nice basement with a great drainage system that keeps it dry - so long as the sump pump can run. The rain was horrible: ~5-6 inches overnight. There was also a tornado warning, so we were in the basement for most of the storm.

Then the power went out.

Now, I had installed a battery backup sump-pump six months earlier, so that was able to keep up for a while. Our cell service also went in and out as the power outage was very large and our service at home was spotty (and the towers were over loaded). The only way for us to get ahold of family for help was through the land-line. I still keep at least one plugged in phone (non-cordless), just for this reason. Because of the land-line I was able to get my father-in-law to bring over a generator to power my sump-pump for the next day or so until our power was restored. Our basement had almost no water damage, mainly because we kept a land-line.

I dropped my landline for the first time in my life 3 months ago. Apparently you need one to order xDSL, but not to keep xDSL (since my DSL still works).

I haven't actually placed a call on my landline in about 5 years, so I figured there's no reason to keep it.

I'm Canadian, I get DSL through a dry loop (phone line, with no actual phone service). I was under the impression dry loops were available everywhere, maybe not though.

As to the popularity, I know very few people young enough to have had a cell phone in high school who now have a landline. I know very few people outside of that group who don't.

The people outside that group that don't are often in the category of moving outside their current city after they got cell phones. When you're going to have to change the landline number anyway, and notify all your friends of the new number, and they already all know your cell phone....

Most of the over-25s I know (myself included) that don't have a landline ended up dropping it during a move.

We have what's called naked DSL or dry-loop (it's de-coupled from phone service). At least in my market, the phone company's system still uses phone numbers for everything so there is a phone number for the account but it doesn't function and you can't plug a phone into it. The FCC has mandated it as a concession during large mergers, so it's available pretty much everywhere in the country.

According to the CDC, as of June 2010 about 25% of US households have no wireline phone but have at least one mobile phone.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr039.pdf

This comes up every election year because of the prevalence of phone based opinion polling. Younger people are more likely to not have a land line and thus not be polled, etc etc.

Actually, I just did some Googling and apparently there are a couple of ISPs in my country that do naked DSL.

It costs more than twice than a landline and a 20Mbps connection.

As an aside, the cell phone/landline polling bias has been measured and is not especially large.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1761/cell-phones-and-election-po...

I had a land-line when I first moved into my own place only because DSL was the only option for my building... But I signed up with lifeline for $5/month and never really used the phone for anything other than to collect telemarketers voice-mail...

I have a DSL-only plan with AT&T. It works fine, but every time I call for support, they ask me for "the phone number on my account", and I have to re-explain ten times that I have only DSL, and not phone or TV service. Often I am told that it is impossible.

Are you sure they're not asking for the phone number of the party responsible for the account as a means of locating your account?

Whether you buy phone from them or not, you still have a phone number associated with your account (cell phone etc), just a way to look up your record.

At least for my naked AT&T DSL, there's a 'fake' phone number (0-xxx-xxx-xxxx) associated with the account. Usually, the automated prompt won't recognise that number, but human representatives are fine with it.

We had a landline at first, mostly for emergency. That cost us about $13-15 a month with fees and taxes. And all we got from it was unwanted sales calls and debt collectors who were looking for someone who had that number before.

For people who don't have children (and even then…) and have a cell phone, I don't really see a good reason to still have a landline at this point.

I know that in France, for example, having a landline doesn't really cost you anything more than having the Internet, so most people have one. But $13 a month for nothing helps cutting that cord.

>and have a cell phone, I don't really see a good reason to still have a landline at this point.

I haven't had a landline since 2004 but I'm considering getting one again. The reason is that neither my AT&T iPhone nor Skype via my AT&T DSL works all that great from my apartment. But I'm also looking at replacing my DSL modem/router in case that is why the DSL doesn't work. (That's what AT&T thinks is going on.)

I fail to see how having children requires a landline. Does 911 work different for cell phones? DO children require 911 more than adults?

> Does 911 work different for cell phones?

Yes, it does. Calling 911 from a cell phone connects you to a big regional call center that gets your location and transfers you to your local one, whereas calling 911 from a land line connects you to your local emergency call center immediately.

Also, calling 911 from a land line gives the dispatcher your address. Cell phones will send along your location if they can get it, but GPS doesn't work too well indoors, and tower-based location can be off by tens or hundreds of meters.

I haven't had a landline since 2007. Mobile phone, Internet and Skype more than meets all of my requirements.

During the earthquake, cell phone service was out but landline worked like a charm :) And that's why we have one

during the earthquake for us our land lines (25 pair cable) crossed a mains somewhere underground and cause our copper to burst into flames.

Whoa, what? There's still something called "long distance"?

Ha! This is just poor marketing. If they simply hiked up the price two bucks and said "your first $2 of 'long-distance' is free" there'd be no hubbub.

I'm tired of telco monopolies.

It should either be a proper utility run by the government or a free market company that doesn't get government granted monopoly to certain areas.

A government run telco would pretty much serve the same purpose as the postal service. The big brother aspect isn't appealing, but it I think internet and phone is similar to power, roads, and water. Critical infrastructure shouldn't be controlled by a handful of monopolies.

AT&T is a really bad company and has been for a really long time. (Another example company with a similar record is Allstate Insurance.) At this point in time it is so well known and obvious, that anyone still using them is basically a masochist that likes to be abused. I don't feel anyone else should get involved in this situation at this point since it's obviously consensual and people certainly have many other carriers to choose from. People in every state in the US have access to a large number of telephone service companies. There is not just one. No one is being forced to use AT&T. It is a free choice to do so. If they were still a monopoly as Ma Bell then certainly I could get behind proposals for government intervention and regulation but it simply isn't needed here. Vote with your feet, or accept the dysfunctional relationship you have chosen to be in.

The choice isn't there. I have AT&T for a cable connection. My other option is Comcast, which is just as bad. And Comcast only recently moved into the neighborhood. I know many people who's only choice, literally, is AT&T for any kind of connection. There's simply no one else around.

In terms of cell service, it's pretty much AT&T or Verizon. The other players are tiny by comparison.

Up here in Canada, TELUS did the exact same tactic with its landline customers. I called them to complain but they explained that the fee was to maintain their infrastructure, even though I wasn't using it (I never use long-distance).

I asked them to put a block on my landline so that no long-distance calls could be made. That somehow placated them enough to remove the maintenance fee from my account. Within 6 months, I moved to another provider. I don't like being charged for not using services so I vote with my wallet.

Is there any chance AT&T will allow customers to do the same as I did?

> … Within 6 months, I moved to another provider …. > > Is there any chance AT&T will allow customers to do the same as I did?

The first quoted sentence illustrated why the answer to the second is often 'no'. In my market, and I think many others, there is no alternative to AT&T for DSL (I don't know about landline service; I don't have it), so they don't feel any need to keep us happy.

Telcos generally have monopolies when it comes to landline so.... no.

Coincidentally, this is why the government should step in.

It's the governments, generally, who grant them the monopoly in the first place.

Though if you look at the history of anti-trust and telcos in the US, it was the anti-competitive practices of AT&T (as early as 1917), which resulted in anti-trust actions being taken against them. At the time it was setting inter-connect fees to other carriers sufficiently high that the competitors were forced out of the market.

Now, why does this suddenly remind me of various "carriage fees" proposed by contemporary broadband providers....

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