Slashdot Mirror
Real-World 3G Monthly Cost With Taxes and Fees?
Kristl writes "I have called AT&T and walked into several AT&T stores to ask 'How much will an AT&T phone plan cost per month with taxes and fees and everything?'. No one can answer this question. They are evasive and become testy when I push them on it. Their answer is they can't tell me what the government is going to charge me as the fees can vary month to month, but I've been an AT&T customer for several years, and my taxes and fees have not varied more than a dollar in all of that time.
So I question them: 'Can you just tell me what the taxes and fees will be for a 3G plan in California that has the basic calling plan, basic data plan, and the basic text plan?' I even do the math for them, that's $75. Okay AT&T, what are the taxes and fees on $75? Oh, they can't tell me that, as the taxes and fees can vary from month to month." There's more to this justified rant (below); real-world numbers in comments could help answer the questions that cell carriers seem content to sidestep as completely as possible.
"Okay ATT, can you tell me what the taxes and fees were on $75 plan last month? No.
Okay AT&T, cn you tell me what my taxes and fees were last month on my current $40 plan ... that only requires reading my bill right? Oh good! They can read! Yes they can tell me what the taxes and fees were on my $40 account last month.
Okay AT&T, we have progress ... can you now pull up a plan that has a $40 calling plan, a $30 3G data plan, and a $5 text plan? The answer? No, they can't do that, that would be an invasion of privacy.
So I ask, can they go through the motions of setting my account up for the iphone plan I described above and then tell me what the taxes and fees amount to? Oh, of course not!
This doesn't seem like it should be so hard. What is the conspiracy that ATT refuses to tell me what the my bill would cost per month were I to switch to a new plan?"
Okay AT&T, cn you tell me what my taxes and fees were last month on my current $40 plan ... that only requires reading my bill right? Oh good! They can read! Yes they can tell me what the taxes and fees were on my $40 account last month.
Okay AT&T, we have progress ... can you now pull up a plan that has a $40 calling plan, a $30 3G data plan, and a $5 text plan? The answer? No, they can't do that, that would be an invasion of privacy.
So I ask, can they go through the motions of setting my account up for the iphone plan I described above and then tell me what the taxes and fees amount to? Oh, of course not!
This doesn't seem like it should be so hard. What is the conspiracy that ATT refuses to tell me what the my bill would cost per month were I to switch to a new plan?"
Too expensive or looks shady? Don't fucking buy it. Take your money elsewhere.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You know, I don't really like the iPhone either, but this is a bit much. TFS' complaint could be used for any phone, any carrier in the U.S. I'm not saying it isn't crooked, or that the policies are particularly just, just that this was a problem well before Steve ever even thought of the iPhone.
Anyway, direct answer to the question of "how much total for basic calling, data, and text?" is pretty much always about $100 to $120 here in the U.S. For the iPhone, Treo, Blackberry, Voyager, whatever. In case you actually didn't know...
Caveat Utilitor
..yet another way they fuck you. They SET the "taxes" and "fees", either through the locally bribed PUC or just arbitrarily on their own.
Like the "franchise fee". That's my favorite. I don't give a fuck what you have to pay for your fucking franchise--please stop pretending like you don't have any choice in the matter. But on the other hand, in a lot of places, they actually rig it up so that they are _required by law_ to charge for things like that, for money that they actually keep.
expandfairuse.org
When traveling to California last year, that was one thing that I really didn't like - how prices are quoted exclusive of tax.
In Australia, the price quoted has to be the price that is paid by the consumer - the airline industry recently got into trouble for not doing this i.e advertising cheap fares exclusive of the fuel levy, tax and other surcharges.
In addition to this, the amount of tax that was charge very often ends up on the receipt so businesses can use it to calculate their GST credits etc
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
I strongly disagree! When you're talking about a month after month fee that you'll likely be paying for as long as 24 months straight, even an extra $10 quickly becomes an extra $240 you're paying in that time period. Unless you're independently wealthy or something, that's not just some "small change" worthy of just ignoring! That's about what I paid, total, for my original iPhone I bought off Apple's refurbished store.
And the issue I have with AT&T is, I suspect their "taxes" also include a lot of dubious charges. Being a govt. regulated company, it seems it's easier for them to get approval for more funding through a new or increased tax than by actually getting FTC approval for a rate increase.
I know I initially did the $79.99 per month plan, thinking like my old US Cellular plan that was priced about the same, I'd wind up paying around $85 after taxes. But somehow, AT&T wound up billing me more like $97 each month.
assuming they don't mark up any of the charges on the bill (kinda shows if you mark up the tax) they have to put "profit" in there somewhere. The recovery cost looks like their margin in disguise.
As for why they don't roll it all into one number, the govt requires them to spell out most of the things that go into the bill, so they have nowhere to hide the profit at. So there it is.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Qwest did this to me:
I was paying between 75-80 dollars a month on my phone bill. (DSL is included in that.) I talked with the Qwest guy and they looked at my long-distance spending. It was a 'per minute' thing and ranged from 17-22 dollars. He said that I could get an unlimited plan for $15, and have a fixed rate.
So we talked about it, he had to sign me up for a 'packager' to get that plan, but he said the total would come to $75.
I talked to the salesman, while holding the bill said, I'm paying $75 a month now, can you assure me that's what this new one is? He ran the numbers again. "YUP."
So, he had to call the guy at the computer to set it all up. Before they finalized it, the guy at the computer totalled everything up and once again said "$75".
So, when I got my next bill and it was 85$ I was a little confused, but figured it was transfer fees. (I attempted to read it several times, but couldn't) Next month's bill came and it was $92.
So, I called, and the technician ran the phone and said that my features come to $75...PLUS fee's and taxes, and so I should expect the bill to be between $80 and $90 a month.
I had been lied to by both of the salesman (surprise!!) in concert. So I asked about going back to what I had before, and of course, that was impossible, because those features weren't offered anymore.
Now I'm stuck with a bill that's about $5/month more than it was before, and just waiting for an oppurtunity to get service some other way (lovely monopolies these.)
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
We need two things here, which would be very nice.
1) A website that shows the calculations for cell phone taxes, state by state and carrier by carrier. Scans of bills (names redacted, of course) could supply the info efficiently, as can just calling the damn company if they are competant.
2) Viewing our current bill like we can view banks. I'm sure as soon as I make a text, the charge is added to my next bill. So why can't I see that bill online?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
It sounds like what he wants is to know *before* he signs up for a plan, not after activation.
I don't know about you, but I don't buy anything else on which the tax is unknown by the seller, even though the seller is the one collecting it. When i buy something, they ring it up, the machine calculates the tax, and they tell me how much it is before I pay. The problem is that they're essentially telling you to sign a two year contract committing yourself to paying whatever bill they send you, but won't tell you what the bill will be.
It would be very easy for ATT to push out a list to their stores every month in which they say what each price plan worked out to with taxes for each state or zip code in the past billing cycle, with a disclaimer that of course if taxes and fees change the amount will be different in the future.
They just don't want to because they don't give a shit about customers or customer service, not because it's a difficult task or some mysteriously unknowable figure.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Even worse is that most of these contracts stipulate that you're going to pay them for the next two to three years, but don't lock in the price. You can get a $100/mo cell phone or satellite TV plan today and three months from now they could double the price and you'd be obligated to either pay it or pay an early termination fee.
And yet they manage to send out hundreds of thousands of bills every month that calculate it down to the penny. Sure, they might make mistakes and have to offer refunds or disclaimers, but there's no excuse for them to not be able to tell you exactly what a $79.99 plan in a given ZIP code would have been billed after all taxes/fees were added last month.
This is basic customer service, not some advanced alien technology beyond the reach of AT&T.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Ah the joys of requiring advertised prices to include sales tax.
And yes I do realise that that will never work in the US due to your infuriatingly complicated tax system.
So in other words, you would be fine with customer service reps randomly looking up your account records to answer this sort of question?
I can not imagine a way in which that isn't an invasion of privacy, and I would not be doing business with AT&T any longer were they to allow that sort of behavior. It's bad enough that the NSA may or may not be listening in, do you really want some underpaid salesperson snooping as well?
Then get the right software on your fucking computers that CAN PULL THE NUMBER OUT OF YOUR ASS ON DEMAND and stop making apologies for a crappy system. There is no reason you can't at least give a close estimate.
Damn, that is expensive. So the answer to my original question would, apparently, be "just about, yes".
Which is, of course, why I asked it. I don't know why it takes five replies and several assholes before I could get to that point. (Not that you're one of those assholes, just a bunch of these other guys.)
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I've had nothing but great customer service from American Express (and I have barely needed it over quite a few years), and the people that I have dealt with for ETrade (go with Ameritrade for a discount broker, they have more consistent pricing, or just go with Vanguard or Fidelity) have clearly been in India much of the time, but they have been competent and I didn't have any trouble understanding them. The people I have dealt with for both Geico and Ameriprise were helpful and competent.
A lot of it sucks, but there are companies that are somewhat better.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Where is the broadband service capacity increases?
Why increase capacity when you can kill off the top 1% of users every month?
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
So you're saying that if you can afford $n, you can afford (1.1 * $n), no matter what n is; this means that you can afford infinity dollars.
The other possibility is that, you know, some people have budgets; a dollar added to one item is a dollar they have to take from somewhere else, and therefore it is possible for something to be more expensive than it's worth.
Sorry to come off all persnickety. It's just that if I could get my gf to pay a little more attention to numbers like this, I swear I'd have infinity dollars by now...
All the poor guy wants to know is some basic pricing info. Seems to me all he has to do is post this question more directly. After the initial rant about AT&T, let's just ask one of us.
iPhone Dotter, who has this plan, please post this data (even if you have to do it shielded anonymous.)
Or is billing structure copyrighted now?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Nobody is claiming AT&T should have psychic powers or warranty their customers against future changes outside their control. But expecting AT&T to provide *past* and *current* information for the sake of the customer making a more informed decision is perfectly reasonable. If they can't tell you what the taxes were on a given price plan last month, its because they don't care about informing the customer, not because it's a difficult piece of information for the company to provide. If your bill changes by $.01 every month, I'd guess that's just a rounding difference -- hardly something beyond their ability to explain in advance or include in the price information (or even eliminate if it bothers a lot of customers).
For all the similarities between phone companies and cable monopolies, my local cable company was able to tell me in seconds what my monthly bills would be including taxes and surcharges when I asked them about it while signing up. Of course they said it will be *around* this amount, not an exact to-the-penny guaranteed bill, but they broke down how much of the extra was for each tax or fee and then I had a sense of what might go up in the future.
Phone companies disclaim nearly everything they advertise about coverage, service availability and quality, the idea that they can't figure out how to disclaim future tax changes or accounting changes from any information they provide is absurd.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Evets, I suggest you go back to that page and re-read the section above those charges. You know, the bit where they say there will be additional taxes that aren't quoted?
See my previous comment.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"