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AT&T's Bad Math Strikes MythBusters' Savage
etherlad writes "MythBusters' Adam Savage got a bill charging him $11,000 for 'a few hours' of Web surfing while in Canada, using his AT&T USB Mercury modem. AT&T gave him a quote on the data rate: '.015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb.' Looks like AT&T didn't learn from Verizon's inability to do math. AT&T is also claiming Savage downloaded over 9 GB, which he calls 'frakking impossible.' Savage's huge following on twitter got him a speedy response by AT&T."
Bust the all the myths that the companies quote about why they need to charge what they do, reliability, and especially that there is competition in the marketplace?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
FTA:
[AT&T] hasn't exactly been garnering positive reactions from its legions of Twitter-using members.
I'd say. If their customer service is anything like cell phone companies up here, it probably takes more than 140 characters to navigate their phone tree to talk to a human!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
It's not the fans.
You don't mess with people that blow stuff up for a living.
Even if they're nerds.
Dual Opteron < $600
anyone else think those companies are crooks for charging per kilobyte like that is complete bull s(*@# ? just loading a damn web page like cnn.com is almost 1MB so that would be 1$
Not reading the article title much less the summary or article?
Well, *THERE'S* your problem.
Two of the most powerful entities in the world are humbled by Twitter. Be afraid, be very, very afraid.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
When you're trying to divide and conquer, any communication is scary.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
This stuff always makes the headlines when the bill amounts to 1,000's of dollars. The real problem is that there are probably a constant stream of people being billed $5, $20, maybe $50 for the usage. When they pass it off and just pay it, then the company lines its pockets with easy money.
No one should be held liable for outrageous bills like this. AT&T failed to put reasonable controls in their billing system so customers are alerted when there's an obvious technical error, unauthorized use, or a simple mistake. American Express says my credit line is unlimited, but if I try to spend $100k they will decline the purchase and contact me. If I had a history of paying $100k bills they may allow it. But AT&T allows an account that's never exceeded a few hundred dollars reach $11,000. We all know why, unlike American Express, AT&T doesn't incur $11,000 in expenses so they don't bother doing anything about it.
It doesn't make any sense to me. Most people are unable to pay the bill, and anyone that can afford it has the resources to fight them. Either way, it generates a lot of bad PR and very little revenue. I'm surprised Apple hasn't put more pressure on them, these stories are frequently reported as "man receives $10,000 iPhone bill."
This is why call centre scripts should never use symbols, like "$1.50", or in this case "$0.015". They should explicitly write out what the person will say, i.e., "one dollar fifty", or "one point five cents". This is because people are incredibly stupid/prone to fluffing things up under stress, especially in a dull repetitive job dealing with annoyed customers.
Anyway, 9 GB in a few hours eh? For casual web browsing? To get to 9 GB would require watching TEN HOURS of TWO MBIT video streams. I suspect YouTube is 500kbps so that's FORTY HOURS of YouTube. To consistently get two mbit on a 3G modem would be a miracle.
Being charged to receive cell calls makes sense. In other countries such as the UK calling a cell phone costs the caller more than calling a landline. How do you know which you called? Cell phones have their own area code. In the US there are no area codes for cell phones so there is no way for a caller to know. Conceptually the call goes to the regular area code and then has to be transmitted by radio to your phone and the latter bit is why you are charged for incoming and outgoing calls. Of course it doesn't work like that under the hood any more but it used to in the begining. Either way someone is paying extra for the cell phone call cost.
Some countries don't have this system but they aren't comparable to the US. All of the UK, NI and various islands fit in 2/3 of California. Germany is the same size as Montana. The scale is very different.
SMS receiving used to be free. The reason for the charges is because of a corrupt market. The carriers have a cartel. They fought very hard against number portability. There are two different radio systems, and even the one used by the rest of the world (GSM) is on different frequencies. Phones are sold cheap but lock you into a two year contract and you are unlikely to be able to use a phone between carriers even if it is unlocked. All this minimizes the ability of consumers to change carriers. The cartel players also by some miraculous coincidence charge exactly the same for SMS. Whenever one raises the price, they all do.
A secondary issue is that voice is charged too cheaply since that is what the headline number looked at by consumers is. Consequently the carriers make up for it by nickel and diming on every single other thing they can, including SMS.