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?"

Comments

simple solution

[ArchieBunker]

Too expensive or looks shady? Don't fucking buy it. Take your money elsewhere.

Re:simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

and where is elsewhere? Seriously, when they're all doing it where is elsewhere???

Re:simple solution

[owlnation]

and where is elsewhere? Seriously, when they're all doing it where is elsewhere???

There is no there, there.

Re:simple solution

[backdoc]

I haven't found "elsewhere". So, I tend to just say, "screw the whole lot", and simply choose not to patronize any of them. Until they get a clue, I'll just use my basic phone that doesn't do anything other than make a call. And, if they piss me off, I'll turn the whole damn thing off. Seriously, I did without a phone before and I can damn sure do it again.

Re:simple solution

[GigaplexNZ]

No, you just shouldn't get iPhones.

Re:simple solution

[jaweekes]

I hate to say it, but I don't think competition would do it. I think regulation will be needed to fix the phone industry as a whole.

It's taken regulation in Europe and other countries to achieve fair and honest telecommunications; it's just a petty that America is unwilling to regulate an industry with such a stranglehold on everyone.

I remember back in the 90's the telecom companies managed to get billions from the government to upgrade their networks to speed up Internet access, but nothing happened with the money, and there has been no government checking if the money was spent on the Internet.

This isn't a rant about what you said, but a rant at the government I guess. We shouldn't be lagging in Internet access for any reason right now.

Re:simple solution

[cgenman]

Ways phone companies rip you off in the US:

* The "guess your monthly usage" shell game. Guess high, and you're paying for services you don't use. Guess low, and you will be hit with a 100 dollar bill for overusage
* Grossly overcharging for text / multimedia messages
* Grossly overcharging for data on non-unlimited plans. I remember downloading a game once on an AT&T network... the game cost 5 dollars, and the data charge to transfer the game was 10.
* Locked into contracts / locked phones
* Disabling features of phones they don't like
* Compared to worldwide rates, overcharging for basic minutes too.

Biased much?

[clang_jangle]

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...

wow

[rastoboy29]

..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.

Eliminate Component Based Pricing

[omegashenron]

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

Re:Eliminate Component Based Pricing

[jfruhlinger]

I've been told that this is actually a deliberate aspect of the U.S.'s generally tax-suspicious culture. In essence, you are supposed to know just how much you pay in taxes on purchases, so that you get worked up about it and resist increases and push for decreases. If the tax were invisible, it would be less ofa political issue.

Re:Who cares?

[King_TJ]

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.

Re:just ask

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like what he wants is to know *before* he signs up for a plan, not after activation.

Re:Who cares?

[NMerriam]

Better to just sidestep it and let you figure out the taxes yourself, like you would have to with any other purpose that is taxed.

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.

Even Worse

[Lord Byron II]

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.

Re:ever fill out a tax form?

[NMerriam]

Figuring out the taxes on a phone line is rather complimakated

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.

Re:ever fill out a tax form?

[hedwards]

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?

Re:ever fill out a tax form?

[dreamchaser]

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.

Re:Who cares?

[straponego]

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...

Re:It depends on the state...

[RodgerDodger]

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.