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AT&T Is Screwing Customers By Almost Tripling a Bogus Fee (androidpolice.com)
AT&T has almost tripled the cost of the "Administrative Fee" featured in its wireless service bills. "Up until early this year, that 'fee' was typically assessed at $0.76 per postpaid line -- not nothing, but over the course of two years of service, it ends up being a little over $18," reports Android Police. From the report: Most recently, subscribers getting their statements for June are finding an Administrative Fee charge of $1.99 per line every month. That brings the two-year cost of this "administrative fee" to almost $50 for each line on your account. The fee was raised earlier this year incrementally in March (by $0.54), but this new hike comes just three months after the first one, and it's not even clear why.
AT&T is likely hoping subscribers just won't notice their per-line bill is going up $1.23 a month versus where it was a few months ago, and in the process, could net almost a billion dollars in additional revenue according to one analyst. This could allow AT&T to finance up to $10 billion in new debt to expand its ever-broadening media empire. The fee is being assessed against all postpaid subscribers, regardless of their service plan or any grandfathering. AT&T says the fee is related to its cost of doing business, in terms of interconnect fees with other operators and cell site rents.
AT&T is likely hoping subscribers just won't notice their per-line bill is going up $1.23 a month versus where it was a few months ago, and in the process, could net almost a billion dollars in additional revenue according to one analyst. This could allow AT&T to finance up to $10 billion in new debt to expand its ever-broadening media empire. The fee is being assessed against all postpaid subscribers, regardless of their service plan or any grandfathering. AT&T says the fee is related to its cost of doing business, in terms of interconnect fees with other operators and cell site rents.
They are merely increasing profit without increasing the cost of the plan.
All service providers have been doing this for years by itemizing the bill and adding on taxes and fees.
Rick B.
That's fine. AT&T can figure out to pay those costs, since it's not my fucking business.
Maybe I don't want any administration of my line. I doubt I'll miss it, whatever it is.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Offtopic, yes, but I wanna know!
If it's part of the cost it's part of the cost. They advertise costs that are bfore Fees. People get this when it's taxes and 911 fees but fees that GO to ATT are B.S. deception.
why not advertise free service*
* plus $64/mo content delivery fee.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Here's your chance to cancel. You have 30 days to notify AT&T from when they notify you of the fee change. Section 1.3 of the user agreement states you will be charged no early termination fee and can keep any promotional device you received. https://www.att.com/legal/term...
is "Regulatory Compliance Fee". This is a fee T-Mobile charges me so that _they_ can comply with regulations. You know, like every other business on Earth does. But the line item makes it sound like a tax. They're hoping I'll blame the government for the cost of my cell phone rather than them and their damned hidden fees.
I have to admit it does also irritate met that I pay a fee to extend service to rural communities who consistently vote against government assistance for such things. Not that I begrudge them phone & internet, but I wish they'd stop fighting tooth and nail against it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
is supposed to be included in the fucking prices of your products and services, as is your profit margins.. 'above the line'.. neither belongs tacked on to the bottom of the bill masquerading as a tax.
have the balls to raise the fucking prices above the line and in your advertisements. quit being sneaky little greedy shits.
fuck at&t. fuck comcast. fuck charter. fuck time warner. fuck verizon. fuck uscc. fuck centurylink. fuck sprint. fuck tmobile. fuck directv. fuck dishnetwork. fuck. them. all. preferably with a very large rusty crowbar
The all-inclusive... wait for it... Billing Fee $4.00 a month per line.
I just canceled and ported my number to another service. A month after I paid my last real bill, I received yet another bill to resolve remaining charges. The bill that I just received is for $0.02. What the heck? It's going to cost them more than 2 cents to process my payment, so why bother billing me?
when it bills ME for FUCKING me!
Thank goodness there's such a thing as competition in wireless.
Assuming there is no anti-competitive price fixing going on.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
News at 11!!! I mean yea it's kinda scummy that they all do the "added fee" BS but come on, acting like they are raping your hamster is a bit much.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Many, many years ago I would get calls from AT&T offering me some amazing deal if I switched my landline service to them. I would ask them repeatedly whether that was the actual bottom line price that I would be billed for, and they would assure me it was. Then, I'd receive my first bill and it would be almost double what they said. I would call customer support, and they would tell me that the sales group was a different department and they shouldn't be making promises like that and it couldn't be changed. That happened twice. Finally I got rid of my landline and swore I'd never give AT&T another dollar of my money ever again.
Until a couple years ago, when they bought DirecTV. Bastards, now they're getting money from me again. And that's another shady bill that gradually creeps upward every couple of months.
They kept adding random services to our bill without asking, such as "phone insurance". We tried to stay with them because they were the only carrier that worked well in our area. For some unknown reason the other 2 carriers' cellular signals don't come in clear.
But my otherwise patient wife got so fed up correcting bills that she cancelled AT&T, and adamantly refuses to go back. We now live with crappy reception from one of the other 2 carriers. I have to walk outside and go 2 blocks to use my cell-phone. We tried various gizmos to boost the in-house signal without success. We also have to keep our land-line.
I curse AT&T and then tell myself at least I get exercise from this "exercise".
Their telemarketers also call about once a week. I either hang up on them or do Trump impressions about what losers they are.
Table-ized A.I.
Postpaid = They charge you whatever they want, and if you don't pay they sell it to a shady collection agency that will call you every day for the rest of your life and try to screw with your credit.
You would think they would benefit from you paying for the service up front, and if they don't provide service they owe you a refund. But nope, they love them some collection agencies and you wasting hours disputing the overly complicated bill.
the wording is specifically designed to make me think it's something other than a fee. It's supposed to sound like a tax. This in turn is supposed to drive me to demand lower taxes, most of which go to corps like T-Mobile.
A single lump sum isn't trying to trick me into a public policy that negatively impacts my life and the public commons.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I want the big number in the advertisement to be the total, not just one line item. This way I can quickly compare one carrier's total to another carrier's total.
AT&T can figure out to pay those cost
They did. It's a business, not a charity. You will pay it one way or another.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
When you look at the Debt service providers have : https://investors.att.com/~/me... I can understand why. Total Debt is sitting at $163 B.
they fuck you at EVERY turn
enjoy your freedumbs! those handsguns are winning BIGLY for all your children.
Or they can take it from the "profit column" instead of making everything a pass-through. Companies aren't entitled to being stinking rich.
Considering the AT&T logo is basically the Death Star, I think their updated corporate motto hits the mark:
We are altering the deal. Pray we don't alter it any further.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why let Las Vegas hotels have all the fun, am i right? The *ATT **Unlimited Plan now only ***$5 per month
*Pending a vote on a Walmart-Mcdonalds-ATT merger
**Limited to 100MB on days ending in Y
***Now with a $50 resort, err, freedom fee
Pay != earn ... if ya shoot-a-few AT&T mucky-muck$. Get the drift pad're ? It's tough to enjoy excess profits when yer eaten' grass . What's that ... no balls for doin'-the-dirty ? Then get fucked by Ameri-nazi capitalists.
Assuming there is no anti-competitive price fixing going on.
What use is price fixing if everyone gets to tack on his own bogus fees?
Or they can take it from the "profit column" instead of making everything a pass-through. Companies aren't entitled to being stinking rich.
Sure they are. The American political system firmly relies on bribes (also known as "lobbying") as part of the decision-forming process, and bribes have to paid out of money received as a consequence of the politicians' activities. So the companies sure are entitled to being stinking rich. That's what they pay the lawmakers for.
I would say: fuck the US companies. When I was there I had no idea how much Iwould pay after looking at a pricelist.
As a European I am used to pay what I see listed. Not more. Not less. Taxes and service is included.
When they changed the system for e.g. restaurants, they added the 16% service to it as well as the tax.
Tipping is bot needed and I hate it. I do not tip the bankteller for doing their job. No need to do it for a waiter. And yes,I thought the same when I was one.
Just show me the price so I can make a decussion.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
One can at least get something (paperwork initiated on the part of the Gov and provider) for your "administration fee" by submitting an FCC complaint: https://consumercomplaints.fcc... This will typically prompt a phone call from the service provider where they will explain the fee and possibly offer a reduced plan. Recent experience with "Welcome to the new Frontier" gained me a non-limited term, a ~$5 decrease, a $3 increase all offsetting a new $1.99 fee. (Net gain was essentially nothing except I got Frontier to spend some "administration time" on little o'l me.)
Hmm. Wonder how evil that is. Let's see...
$1.23/month would just about match inflation if the monthly bill were around $58/month. Which would about split the difference between their $40/month plan and their $80/month plan.
No opinion (and no real desire to go data diving to find out) as to the "normal" ratio of $40/month and $80/month plans, so I'll go with a guess of a 50-50 split (note, based on the download speeds of the plans, I'd guess more $80 plans than $40 plans, but that's just an unsubstantiated opinion).
So a Service Fee raises their annual rate to be in line with inflation. Color me horrified. No, wait, a better word might be "bored"....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
they are not alone with their bogus fee's, any place where you get a 'detailed' bill will have some admin costs in some form or other that is just really vague and could be anything. it's also always on the bill, no matter what service you used, depending on who is behind the counter you get different answers on what it actually is.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
When Frontier took over from Verizon Fios they added that fee too. I made and paid it separately from my bill. I wonder how much it costs them to process that $1.99 each month?
As much as I favor light-touch regulation, this is a case for legislative intervention.
They need money for eight new hidden eavesdropping centers since the current ones were just disclosed.
AT&T is corrupt.
It's like mandatory "resort fees" in hotels. It's not just 299$, no it's 299$ for the room, 50$ resort fee, 24$ for parking, x$ tourist tax and then taxes on top of that. :D
I suppose people just look at the price for what they were looking for and ignore all the mandatory addons.
L'Idiot
Boy, I sure wish the industry I work in could just randomly tack on a bogus fee to everyone's bills without any oversight whatsoever. "Had a bad month? No problem! We'll just raise our EOA (eat our asses) fee $1 for every customer. BOOM!!...REVENUE!!!"
This is the kind of B.S. that's been around for years. Here's a list of the fees on my electric bill:
Cost of electricity you used
Customer account charge $15.12
Delivery service charge $1.62
Environmental benefits surcharge $0.47
System benefits charge $0.11
Power supply adjustment* $0.18
Metering* $44.31
Meter reading* $0.27
Billing* $0.90
Generation of electricity* $3.36
Federal transmission and ancillary services* $0.32
Federal transmission cost adjustment* $0.01
LFCR adjustor $0.12
Tax Expense Adjustor -$0.20
Ridiculous, right? That "metering" fee for a whopping $44.31 is for a fancy shmansy meter capable of handling three-phase service. Here's the kicker: I don't have three-phase service. But the electric company refuses to come change out the meter.
60% of Americans have no emergency fund. A lot have no savings at all. Bullsh*t like laundry lists of fees and getting addicted to a rental economy is why.
Don't tell me, let me guess: because their rates are regulated by the government, so they can't just raise the price?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Euros suck at gratitude except for the Danes. The rest of you are selfish cunts who dont know how to tip. SAD.
If the government left a loophole open so wide you can drive a truck through it, maybe they should change things and include all fees when considering the price. But no, most areas don't regulate the pricing.
I once went into an AT&T store for a quote on my wife's cell phone policy. They told me it would be $xx.xx plus fees. I asked how much the fees were. They informed me they could not tell me a. How much the extra fees were or b. How much my total bill would be with these fees. They also informed me that the information was not available online. I told them that I would assume that the unknown fee amount (with no legal maximum cap that disqualified early termination penalties) to be >= the entire global supply of USD and that I could find a better deal.
Lesson: don't play ball with a company that trys to hide fees from you until you sign. They will most certainly try to take as much advantage of you as possible once they have your money in hand.
Every other business builds their costs into the price of the product. Somehow phone and cable companies get away with adding hidden fees instead of just having to raise the price a little. Why do we let them get away with that?
As much as I favor light-touch regulation, this is a case for legislative intervention.
It shouldn't even really need legislation, it just needs the courts to agree that it constitutes fraud.
You will pay it one way or another.
You miscounted, we're paying it two or three ways at once.
They're making their customers pay for their worker's salary without your knowledge.
Indeed! We've heard similar kinds of excuses in our dealings with AT&T. It's as if they have a database of excuses and recycle them and track what they used on who, and when.
Excuse-A-Tron 9000 [TM]
Maybe they purchased it from Wells Fargo.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't understand how this sort of price buildup is allowed.
WTF is a "fee" assessed by the same entity selling you the service !? Why is that not built into the price of the service ? Why can't we require them to do so ? after all, everyone has taxes and fees to pay and the customer should only care about what the final price is. Everything else is lying.
When I buy a hamburger for $2.99 I don't expect a "burger flipping fee" plus "oil recycling fee" plus "gas connection fees". How the cost is broken down is simply not the customer's problem. Otherwise I have a car to sell you for $100. Plus my seller fee of 20k.
What? No. I'm not talking about regulating prices, I'm talking about pricing. Or perhaps more accurately how prices are advertised. Not including taxes and government imposed fees is one thing, breaking off part of the price you charge so that you can mislead consumers is something else entirely.