AT&T is Screwing Customers by Almost Tripling a Bogus Fee

Uvaman2 said:
Its the we want to merge soon fee... And then they will triple it again for the after merger fee.
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yeah after spectrum bought timewarner cable, our bill went up like $10 because.. the plan we had doesnt exist in the new lineup.. so they "helpfully" moved us up to the next comparable plan they have.. HAHAHA


though time warner pulled that shit some time back.. a new line up of plans.. and magically.. the existing ones went away and we got moved up..
 
katanaD said:
yeah after spectrum bought timewarner cable, our bill went up like $10 because.. the plan we had doesnt exist in the new lineup.. so they "helpfully" moved us up to the next comparable plan they have.. HAHAHA


though time warner pulled that shit some time back.. a new line up of plans.. and magically.. the existing ones went away and we got moved up..
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Some of that is being a greedy asshole and some of it is what deals you have for content. If you want to carry say Viacom they will have rules that you have to take these stations, in this package you can only have X number of stations of which you can only offer Y number of popular stations and if you offer X station then you have to offer all the rest in a package... So part of that could be Time Warner getting new terms, or in the case of spectrum could be that they had different terms that they had to follow and ended up forcing everyone in to their packages. In which case that would knock you up if they couldn't get a grandfather clause worked into their deal. Although at the same time it can also just be that they are greedy assholes and didn't try to get a grandfather clause worked in.
 
Maybe I'm just slow and stupid but I figured the " cost of doing business " was the businesses responsibility, not the customer's. Same goes for charging an extra $2 or $3 a month to receive paper statements. That shit is on the business, not the customer. We should start castrating the bastards that treat their customers like that. Screw a $50-a-month per line cell phone bill anyway. I spent a grand total of $14.35 on minutes in ONE YEAR for my pay-by-the-minute plan and still have a land line with free long distance that costs me about $17 a month.
 
jevans64 said:
Maybe I'm just slow and stupid but I figured the " cost of doing business " was the businesses responsibility, not the customer's. Same goes for charging an extra $2 or $3 a month to receive paper statements. That shit is on the business, not the customer. We should start castrating the bastards that treat their customers like that. Screw a $50-a-month per line cell phone bill anyway. I spent a grand total of $14.35 on minutes in ONE YEAR for my pay-by-the-minute plan and still have a land line with free long distance that costs me about $17 a month.
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Uh.... in EVERY business it is up to the customer to pay to run the business. I am not sure you understand how business works. You must be one of those "profit is evil" types, it is the only way to explain your statement.
 
XvMMvX said:
Uh.... in EVERY business it is up to the customer to pay to run the business. I am not sure you understand how business works. You must be one of those "profit is evil" types, it is the only way to explain your statement.
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Nope. I'm just saying that the cost of doing business should be built into the price of the goods and services offered without any tacked-on fees other than the cost of shipping and cost of returning. The tacked-on fees have gotten way out-of-hand. Some businesses tack on 5 or 6 additional fees.
 
jevans64 said:
Nope. I'm just saying that the cost of doing business should be built into the price of the goods and services offered without any tacked-on fees other than the cost of shipping and cost of returning. The tacked-on fees have gotten way out-of-hand. Some businesses tack on 5 or 6 additional fees.
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The problem is that you aren't buying a can of Pespi or a bag of chips. Lets start with the charge to get a paper bill. Now a business could raise the rates for everyone to cover the cost of that. However not everyone is receiving paper bills, so they started off by doing that as a credit. If you go paperless we will take $3 off your bill. At a certain point you are giving more people a credit than you aren't giving a credit to so then you flip this around. Then you get to the we are going to adjust our prices during the next round so that base cost is assuming you have the credit basically and then those that want a paper copy have to pay. By you going paperless not only do they not have to send out mail which cost postage, but somebody had to print everything so you have the cost of that, then when you send your payment in somebody has to open it, which is money spent there on keeping those people employed. The more people that go paperless the fewer people they need to manage that part of the business so they can downsize that part of things. Same for auto payments, which also ensure they get their money every month instead of you forgetting to send it in. Same goes for some other fees, if you have a generic fee there is no way to put it on the bill if you can be billed for different things. Lets say Company X wants to charge you $4 a month just for you having an account, if they sell phone, internet, tv, plus services x, y and z. They can't add $4 to every service or suddenly if you have 4 services you are paying an extra $16. So they have to pull it off and make that a base charge, which just makes it a generic fee. That isn't saying that there isn't always a better way to do this, but you also can't look at everything in the same light.
 
Exavior said:
The problem is that you aren't buying a can of Pespi or a bag of chips. Lets start with the charge to get a paper bill. Now a business could raise the rates for everyone to cover the cost of that. However not everyone is receiving paper bills, so they started off by doing that as a credit. If you go paperless we will take $3 off your bill. At a certain point you are giving more people a credit than you aren't giving a credit to so then you flip this around. Then you get to the we are going to adjust our prices during the next round so that base cost is assuming you have the credit basically and then those that want a paper copy have to pay. By you going paperless not only do they not have to send out mail which cost postage, but somebody had to print everything so you have the cost of that, then when you send your payment in somebody has to open it, which is money spent there on keeping those people employed. The more people that go paperless the fewer people they need to manage that part of the business so they can downsize that part of things. Same for auto payments, which also ensure they get their money every month instead of you forgetting to send it in. Same goes for some other fees, if you have a generic fee there is no way to put it on the bill if you can be billed for different things. Lets say Company X wants to charge you $4 a month just for you having an account, if they sell phone, internet, tv, plus services x, y and z. They can't add $4 to every service or suddenly if you have 4 services you are paying an extra $16. So they have to pull it off and make that a base charge, which just makes it a generic fee. That isn't saying that there isn't always a better way to do this, but you also can't look at everything in the same light.
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It is way simpler than that... The want to say they offer service at a price and then not give you that price, because they are liars and assholes. Also don't underestimate how complex is a coke or a bag of chips.
 
ManofGod said:
I use Mint Mobile now, which has 5GB of data a month, for $260 a year. It uses the T Mobile towers and in my area, works very well. That is why the more companies increase fees and services, the less money overall will I spend.
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With the eBay coupon sent out today (15% off, code is PERFECTDAY), it is a great time to grab a year of MVNO service from Red Pocket (5GB LTE data, UL text/talk) for about $200 after coupon.
 
Exavior said:
The problem is that you aren't buying a can of Pespi or a bag of chips. Lets start with the charge to get a paper bill. Now a business could raise the rates for everyone to cover the cost of that. However not everyone is receiving paper bills, so they started off by doing that as a credit. If you go paperless we will take $3 off your bill. At a certain point you are giving more people a credit than you aren't giving a credit to so then you flip this around. Then you get to the we are going to adjust our prices during the next round so that base cost is assuming you have the credit basically and then those that want a paper copy have to pay. By you going paperless not only do they not have to send out mail which cost postage, but somebody had to print everything so you have the cost of that, then when you send your payment in somebody has to open it, which is money spent there on keeping those people employed. The more people that go paperless the fewer people they need to manage that part of the business so they can downsize that part of things. Same for auto payments, which also ensure they get their money every month instead of you forgetting to send it in. Same goes for some other fees, if you have a generic fee there is no way to put it on the bill if you can be billed for different things. Lets say Company X wants to charge you $4 a month just for you having an account, if they sell phone, internet, tv, plus services x, y and z. They can't add $4 to every service or suddenly if you have 4 services you are paying an extra $16. So they have to pull it off and make that a base charge, which just makes it a generic fee. That isn't saying that there isn't always a better way to do this, but you also can't look at everything in the same light.
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A business passing off their operating costs to their customers in the form of additional, and often undisclosed fees, is bullshit. Profit is good to a certain point but a CEO is NOT worth 400x the value of a line worker, who actually does the physical labor to get the goods and services out the door. Yes. I'm anti-management because the vast majority step on the people that actually work just to justify their non-value-added jobs. Management absolutely adds nothing to a businesses value.
 
Increased cost of doing business?

Isn't the average profit for a wireless carrier around 90% of the customer's bill? Utter horseshit.
 
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