Earlier this month, Verizon — fresh off its acquisition of AOL — tried to cement its reputation as a collector of ’90s web relics with a reported $3 billion bid for Yahoo’s core internet business. Now it looks like Big Red has competition from AT&T. [More]
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Citi Is Suing AT&T Over The Word “Thanks”
By 6.10.16
Last week, AT&T launched a new loyalty program dubbed AT&T Thanks, offering rewards to customers, especially those who bundle together wireless and pay-TV services from the company. This morning, Citi fired back at the Death Star, alleging that AT&T is stomping all over Citi’s “ThankYou” trademark. [More]
T-Mobile’s New Customer Reward Program Includes Free T-Mobile Stock
By 6.6.16
It’s not just AT&T that’s decided the way to a customer’s heart is through free stuff. As of today T-Mobile is joining the club, with give-aways ranging from pizza to company stock. Yes, literal shares of the business. [More]
Chris Thomas From DirecTV Moved To AT&T, Still Sends Ads Disguised As Greeting Cards
By 6.6.16
Have you received a card from your favorite cousin Chris Thomas lately? All humans are cousins if you go back far enough, after all, and Chris is the public face of DirecTV convincing customers to open mail by disguising it as a greeting card, or some kind of personal mail that you’d actually want to open. [More]
AT&T Starting Customer Reward Program With Discounted Movie Tickets, “Tailored Offers”
By 6.2.16
There’s only so much room for a company as large as AT&T to grow its businesses. Pretty much everyone in the country has a cell phone already, so the only way to attract new customers there is to keep poaching customers from Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. Meanwhile, over in TV-land, DirecTV is huge but cord-cutters are legion. So what’s a giant corporation to do? Give customers presents, of course. [More]
AT&T CEO Says He Can’t Deploy Robocall Blockers Without FCC Approval. He’s Wrong
By 6.1.16
On his personal phone line, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson blocks unwanted, pre-recorded and auto-dialed robocalls. So why is Darth Randy not making this technology available for all of his customers? He claims it’s because he needs the FCC’s permission to do so, but the FCC says that just isn’t so. [More]
Survey Says: You Still Hate Your Cable Company, But Maybe A Little Less Than Before
By 6.1.16
A major annual consumer satisfaction survey is out, and it’s a mixed bag for the cable and telecom sector and all of us who use it. The bad: pay-TV, broadband, phone, and wireless companies still pretty much really suck, and most of us are very dissatisfied with them. The good: year over year, most of them are finally starting to suck less than they used to! [More]
AT&T Working To Put DirecTV In Your Car
By 5.26.16
Parents who count on TV shows, movies, and cartoon to keep the peace between their children in the backseat during road trips could soon be getting a helping hand from AT&T. With the company’s recent acquisition of DirecTV, it plans to include the television service to connected vehicles using its cellular network. [More]
AT&T Trimming Its Phone Financing Plans Down From Four Options To Two
By 5.23.16
Now that all four of the major wireless carriers are firmly on the installment plan bandwagon, AT&T is trying to set itself apart by simplifying its phone financing options.
[More]
AT&T Launches Its Own $10 Internet Access Program For Low-Income Households
By 4.22.16
AT&T is today making good on a promise it had to make to the FCC last year, announcing their new program to connect more poor Americans to the internet and bridge that infamous digital divide. [More]
Here’s Why The Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Aren’t Really Funny
By 4.20.16
We regularly post discoveries from what we call the Raiders of the Lost Walmart, usually obsolete technology that is still on the shelf at comically high prices. It’s fun to laugh at the ancient digital cameras, defunct multiplayer games, and indestructible classic phones on the shelf, but the electronics clearance shelf can be a hazardous place for people who don’t read fine print. [More]
The Consumerist Guide To Understanding Your AT&T U-verse Bill
By 4.14.16
When you sign up for telecom services — some combination of TV, broadband, and/or phone — from your cable company, you’re told you’ll pay something like $49 or $99 a month… and yet the price you actually pay can be as much as 40% or more on top of that, thanks to a heap of sometimes confusing charges and fees. Which ones should you blame the government for, and which are made up by your cable company? One cable company at a time, we’ve been using real customers’ bills to break it down. In previous installations we’ve gone through Comcast, DirecTV, Charter, TWC, and FiOS; now, it’s AT&T’s turn. [More]
AT&T Copies Comcast, Lets U-Verse Customers Pay $30 To Avoid Data Caps
By 3.30.16
We don’t know why anyone would want to be like Comcast, but AT&T sure seems to be doing its best to dress itself up just like the chaps from Kabletown. They both hate community broadband and will lobby to shut it down when it competes with their services, and they both only offer competitive pricing when Google Fiber is in the mix. Now AT&T is following Comcast’s lead on data caps, by generously offering to let customers pay more to avoid running into those monthly limits. [More]
Broadband Industry: It’s Unfair If Facebook Can Collect Your Data, But AT&T Can’t
By 3.29.16
Later this week, the Federal Communications Commission will be voting on a proposal intended to protect some of your personal data from being shared by your Internet service provider, by requiring that the ISP first get your permission. As the vote approaches, the broadband industry is trying to make the case that your ISP’s collecting and sharing of customer data is no different than Facebook or Google’s. [More]
Netflix Admits To Throttling Its Own Streams On AT&T, Verizon Wireless Because Data Caps
By 3.25.16
If you have a network connection of a certain speed available on your phone, you expect receive data at roughly that speed, more or less. That’s how it works. Except that’s not how it’s been working for Netflix: the popular streaming video service was moving at a fraction of what users expected, on Verizon and AT&T networks. Consumers were all ready to line up and blame their mobile carriers, but the wireless companies weren’t the ones screwing around with anything, as it turns out. Netflix was. [More]
Why Doesn’t AT&T Require Email Verification Before Sending Sensitive Account Information?
By 3.24.16
There’s a reason why companies that handle sensitive billing information may ask customers to verify their email addresses before sending any communications. It’s to prevent customers from seeing things they shouldn’t. So why doesn’t AT&T have such a safeguard in place for its customers? [More]
Comcast, AT&T Lobbyists Help Kill Community Broadband Expansion In Tennessee
By 3.16.16
When cable and telecom companies go through the effort of writing anti-consumer legislation for states, they can later be counted on to lobby to keep those laws in place when challenged. Case in point: Lobbyists for Comcast and AT&T recently helped kill a small piece of legislation in Tennessee that would have allowed a city-run utility to expand the reach of its broadband service. [More]
Thanks To Google Fiber And AT&T, Comcast Gigabit Service Will Only Cost $70 In Atlanta
By 3.15.16
Earlier this year, Comcast announced that Atlanta would be one of the five markets to get a taste of new broadband technology that provides fiberoptic-level data speeds over existing cable lines. And while the cable company has previously charged exceedingly high amounts for high-speed fiber access, Comcast says it will only be charging $70/month in Atlanta for this new service. [More]
