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As the new FISA bill—the one that grants retroactive immunity to wiretapping telcos—moves closer to a final vote in the Senate (and a threatened filibuster), Ars Technica looks at the money. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint donated double the amount to House Democrats who supported the bill than to those who opposed it. [Ars Technica]
Update: Voted! Passed 293-129.
Today the House votes on a new compromise FISA Bill that will make the NSA’s formerly questionable activities—like spying on Americans—legal, and will grant conditional immunity upon the telephone companies that aided the NSA in spying on their customers. It’s “conditional” because there will still be a court review, but nobody seems to be taking the court review seriously: Senator Russ Feingold, D-WI, calls it a “capitulation” in the ongoing fight over holding the telcos responsible, and Rep. Roy Blunt, R-MO, says the review will be a “formality.” Looks like you’re about to get off free, Verizon and AT&T!
If you’ve ever received cell phone spam, you know how infuriating it can be—especially if you pay by the message. David Pogue of the New York Times recently got hit with a spate of junk text messages on his Verizon plan, and he figured out how to block most of them. If you’re with AT&T or Verizon you can block any messages sent through the Internet, as well as change your text message address to an alias to thwart number-guessing spammers. Sprint will let you block specific addresses. T-Mobile lets you block email messages and set up filters based on specific phrases. Login info below.
If you’re thinking about getting that new 3G iPhone, you might want to hold off a few more months and see what happens with the other carriers. BusinessWeek has an article about how AT&T’s aggressive subsidizing of the iPhone will have a negative impact on handset makers and carriers, because it’s going to force them to increase subsidies and reduce service fees. Translation: good times for the consumer bold enough to stay off the iPhone train.
Apple’s new 3G iPhone might seem like a bargain at $199: more features, 3G speeds, and $200 cheaper than the original model. Great, except it’s not actually cheaper. The new $199 iPhone is actually $160 more than the $399 iPhone it replaces.
Reader Micah is under contract with AT&T, and is interested in getting the new iPhone when it comes out. Unfortunately, Micah’s account is not currently eligible for an upgrade, so AT&T keeps telling him that he’ll need to cancel his phone, and pay an ETF in order to get the new iPhone. As far as we can tell, this just isn’t true.
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T-Mobile is suing Starbucks for allowing AT&T to supply in-store customers with free wireless Internet access using T-Mobile’s lines and equipment. [NYT via Racked]
Thanks to AT&T settling a recent class-action, the era of third-party scammers cramming consumers with fraudulent subscriptions to ringtone, hookup text and other stupid content services may soon be over. AT&T Customers can claim refunds for wrongful charges from up to 3 of their bills between 1/1/04 and 5/30/08. The lawyers will get $4.3 million. AT&T will now require subscriptions to 3rd party-services with recurring fees to be confirmed by responding to a text message. 3rd party services will also have to send a monthly reminder with unsubscribe info. The firm has filed similar suits against Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Claim forms and more info at thirdpartycontentrefund.com.
AT&T Mobility has agreed to offer refunds to customers who were charged for third-party services like ringtones, although if you were frequently a victim of this you’ll quickly exhaust your refund quota: “Customers will able to claim refunds for spurious charges that appeared on up to three of their monthly bills between Jan. 1, 2004, and May 30, 2008.” AT&T should be sending out a notification to its customers “soon,” but you can already download a refund request.
We get a lot of questions and complaints about the cellphone shopping process, so we thought we’d put together a list of 5 things consumers say to cellphone sales reps that they really should just keep to themselves. Enjoy.
David ordered a refurbished iPhone from AT&T. What he received was a brand new empty plastic bag. Apparently, AT&T has 500 backorders for refurbished iPhones, so for some completely unknown and nonsensical reason, they’ve decided to start shipping empty plastic bags. Let’s join David as he tries to track down the iPhone he ordered…
AT&T has started having early termination fees go down each month for new contracts (old customers are still screwed). The $175 fee for canceling AT&T service before the end of your two-year contract will go down $5 every month. This means that even by month 23 out of the total 24 you will still pay a $60 fee. While the other providers have announced their intention to do the same, Verizon and AT&T are the only companies to actually have ETFs go down over the course of the contract. This should not be confused with “pro-rating,” however, as the fee is not being divided proportionally. If it was, the fee would go down $7.30 each month and by month 23 you would only pay a $7.30 penalty.
Reader Nick’s wife recently ordered an iPhone and was surprised to find it came in two boxes. She was even more surprised when the second box contained only an AT&T plastic shopping bag. It was also packed with brown packing material around it. “I find it comical that the plastic bag had more packing material around it then the $250 iPhone did,” Nick writes.
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AT&T’s one-iPhone-per-customer rule lasted only one day before the company went back to its three-per-customer policy. Apparently they found some more iPhones in the back. [Information Week]
This is Round 40 in our Worst Company in America contest, Capital One vs AT&T!Here’s what readers said in previous rounds about why they hate these two companies…
A testament to the “Series of Tubes” meme’s pervasiveness is its inclusion in an AT&T FastAccess business DSL tech support manual. According to a former employee, her bosses who made the manual were big nerds and read BoingBoing, Gizmodo, and The Consumerist. She also says in one of the the tech support training videos for the new customer Yahoo portal that’s rolling out later this month, it shows how to create a feed for The Consumerist. Note too that the internet is depicted as a giant fluffy cloud.
Reader Nicholas is in the military, and while he was serving in Iraq, AT&T decided to give his phone number to another customer. When he returned, he asked for the number back, but was refused. The rep then convinced him that he needed to sign a new 2 year contract in order to reactivate his number. Naturally, right after he did this, his phone broke, and now AT&T is telling him that he’ll have to wait until 2009 to get a decent upgrade.
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