A reader showed us a letter he was going to send to AT&T. At the end, among his demands, he listed, “a written apology.” We told him to get rid of it. He asked why. He said the apology would actually be worth more to him than the refunds for which he was asking.
telephony
T-mobile Apologises For 3 Months Of No Service With $5 Off Bill
By 11.2.07
Nadine writes:
I recently switched to T-mobile thinking I would get better service at a fair rate. Unfortunately, since the onset of my contract with T-mobile this hasn’t been the case. In the past three months I have experienced major communication difficulties. I have been unable to receive phone calls and many of my text messages are not going through. I have been calling T-Mobile’s customer care to no avail regarding this problem and they informed me that they were experiencing network difficulties in New York City. They claimed that the problems were being worked on. As time passed I continued to experience the same difficulties but to a greater degree. My callers had to text me because they couldn’t get through when calling. I called for help but there was a different excuse given as to why the service wasn’t working…
Get Free Long Distance And International Calls With Talkster
By 11.1.07
Talkster lets you make international and long-distance calls for free. The only catch is that it’s more complicated than making a regular phone call and you have to listen to a short advertisement.
Consumers Grow Unhappier With Buying Cellphones
By 10.30.07
Customer satisfaction with buying cellphones at stores fell this year, reports J.D. Power and Associates in the recently released 2007 Wireless Retail Sales Satisfaction StudySM-Volume 2.
AT&T To Stop Extending Contracts Due To Rate Plan Changes
By 10.29.07
Starting November, AT&T will begin pro-rating early termination fees, and stop extending your contract when you change your calling plan. The new policy comes on the heels of a similar move by Verizon. Could we be entering a new era where cellphone companies will compete on customer satisfaction, rather than Beyoncé ringtones? Don’t think they’re doing it out of kindness, Sprint was recently sued by the Minnesota Attorney General for extending customer contracts when they changed rate plans, and AT&T wants to stay ahead of similar litigation. See, cc’ing your complaints to the Attorney General really works!
Security Firm Says Hackers Can Access Vonage Calls
By 10.26.07
It’s not a good week for Vonage. VoIP Security firm Sipera has announced that they’ve discovered a vulnerability in Vonage’s equipment that can allow hackers to take control of user accounts to intercept calls, make calls via the accounts, eavesdrop, or launch DoS attacks. Although most VoIP systems are about as secure as sending IM messages over a public wifi network (that is, not secure at all), Vonage has a couple of special problems with its Motorola adapters not authorizing requests, which leaves a special door open for bad people doing bad things. The problem also affects adapters from Grandstream and Globe7.
What The Heck Is The "DC Cellular Surcharge Residential" Fee?
By 10.25.07
Kimberly writes:
My concern is over another fee that I get nailed with every month that I had never noticed… Not only do I have to pay a federal universal service charge, but the District of Columbia, where I live (obvs), charges me another time – to the tune of $8.90 a month. That seems exorbitant and arbitrary! Not a good combo! What the hell is this and who do we complain to?
While perhaps exorbitant, the fee isn’t arbitrary….
$18 Fee For Pleasure Of Being Locked To AT&T For Two More Years
By 10.24.07
Jack recently got a new phone for one of his AT&T cellphones. In the process, he of course had to extend his contract another two years. When he got his bill, he discovered a mysterious $18 “upgrade fee.” When he called AT&T, they told him it was the standard contract extension charge.
We Must Shatter Cellphone Companies' Death Grip
By 10.23.07
Mossberg had a great column in the Journal yesterday delivering a shot straight to the skull of cellphone companies and how their oligopolistic ways.
A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer…That’s why I refer to the big cellphone carriers as the “Soviet ministries.”
It’s like a guy builds a road and tells you what kind of horse you can ride on it. Or, as Mossberg points out, it’s like the 70’s, when you had to rent phones from AT&T and you could only use their phone for fear of “damaging” the network. Only when the government stepped in to break it up was the hammer lock broken.
By 10.23.07
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Ben Popken will be on Fox Business News this morning at 7am Eastern, discussing ways to get out of your cellphone contract without early termination fee.
Liveblogging The Senate Commerce Committee Hearing: Cellphone Companies And The Customers They Hate
By 10.17.07
Today at 10 a.m., the Senate Commerce Committee will pry through bone and muscle to see if cellphone companies really do have hearts of pure stone. The Committee will question the industry’s most egregious practices: junk fees, illegal contract extensions, and early termination fees. The industry is working overtime to cast itself as the consumer’s best friend, with AT&T recently agreeing to prorate ETFs as part of a desperate attempt to show that federal regulation is unnecessary.
If FiOs Man Doesn't Show Up, Make Sure You're Not Without Phone Service
By 10.16.07
Apropos of, “Verizon Harasses You For 3 Months To Switch To FiOS, Then Never Shows Up To Install It,” if you sign up for FiOS and they don’t show or they have to reschedule, don’t forget to call your current phone provider and get them to change the disconnect date. Otherwise you can find yourself without phone service because they’re still going to use the same disconnect date they have written down.
By 10.16.07
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“The company said it does not determine the requests’ legality or necessity because to do so would slow efforts to save lives in criminal investigations.” – Verizon Says It Turned Over Data Without Court Orders [Washington Post]
Comcast Law Enforcement Handbook Leaked
By 10.16.07
Comcast’s Law Enforcement Handbook (PDF) was leaked today and posted on Secrecy News.
Verizon Says It Will Only Share Your Info With Other Verizon Companies
By 10.16.07
Verizon says the information sharing opt-out notices it sent to customer, that we told you about a month ago, are only so other Verizon companies can market discounted service bundles, and is not for resell to third-party advertisers.
Verizon's Plan To Share Your Call Data Generates Blog Scrutiny
By 10.15.07
Just a little over a month ago, we alerted Verizon Wireless users to an opportunity to opt-out of Verizion sharing some of your information with unnamed third parties. Specifically, the information is subscriber’s CPNI, which consists of what numbers you call, what numbers call you, and how much the call costs. It is not linked to your name, number, or address.
IRS Struggles To Give Away $8 Billion
By 10.13.07
Free money! Free money! We shouted, begged, implored you to take the free money that was rightfully yours, but no, you would have none of it. The free money was too good for you. Too much effort, you said, to fill out a simple line on your tax return to celebrate phone ownership and our victory in the Spanish-American War. And now, $8 billion beautiful bucks lie cluttering our treasury, taking up valuable space needed for Social Security IOUs.
