Take That, Phone Company!

[doronjosama]

So, for the last few years, we haven't had long distance service. Southwestern Bell/SBC/AT&T/whatever they call themselves today charged such ridiculous fees for it and we kept getting our long distance service changed without our explicit permission (we got "slammed" like three times... yeesh), so we opted to simply NOT HAVE IT. The phone companies were always completely baffled by this whenever they tried to call and get us to sign up for it, but we had calling cards, which worked fine. And, with the internet, we don't really have to call that many people long distance. Well, our plain old vanilla phone bill has been creeping up on the dollar-meter over the last two years. Apparently, when you refuse to play the long distance service game, the phone company finds other ways to charge you. And charge us they did. Our monthly phone bill for plain old vanilla local service, with caller ID, an unlisted number (which they listed *anyway*, despite repeated calls to customer service to keep it unlisted), call waiting with caller ID on that (I hate being surprised on the phone), and nothing else was running us about $45-50 a month. When we first got the service, it was about $30 a month.

Our phone service has also been *horrible* this last month, as someone in the building has gotten fresh DSL or something, so often, in the evenings, we'll have our end of phone conversations disrupted by LOUD SCREECHING RHYTHMIC STATIC. The people on the other end of the line can't hear it, only we can. We have been told there is nothing wrong with the lines. Uh, what?

Enough was enough today. When I went in to pay the cable/internet bill, I signed us up for digital phone. Because we already get the high speed internet (essential for business) and we have a digital cable box (essential for sanity, since we so rarely leave the house), we got a huge discount package, so we will get to keep our same phone number and be getting local service, caller ID, call waiting with caller ID, AND unlimited long distance service for only $2 more than we were already paying for the cable/internet. This will also save us about $43-48 per month. The cable guy comes on the tenth to fix everything up for us.

IN YOUR FACE, AT&T.

Comments

[cudjo-dog.livejournal.com]

(please forgive the long reply. I just got off the phone with "tech-support")

When I first got my own place, I signed up for a telephone service. Long distance service was included in the bill. As this was working too well, the phone company had no choice but to change it. One round of mega-corporation shuffling later, and my telephone service was SWB and my long distance was Sprint.

This was still OK, as I didn’t use long distance much, and thus didn’t get a bill too often. Once again, that was a situation the service providers could not tolerate. I think it was about two years ago, when Sprint changed their policy. Now they’d be charging me on the order of $5 per month whether I made any long-distance calls or not. It goes without saying that they could not combine my long distance bill with my cellular bill, despite the presence of the word “Sprint” on both of them.

Don’t get me started on my old ISP. Apparently I’m the only person in the USA who insists on paying as I go via monthly billing, as opposed to just giving them my credit card number.

I see questionable business tactics like this becoming more and more frequent. If this trend continues, eventually mega-corps will just send large men with crowbars to our homes to extract money for potential future services. As near as I can figure it’s some weird backlash to being unable to offer a product or service anyone would actually consider paying for.

Congrats on sticking to the mega-corp. If enough consumers do this, maybe we can turn this tide.

[chasecorbeau.livejournal.com]

MA BELL SUCKS!

We have not had long distance service in my household for quite a while too, mostly because we hardly ever need to use it, and it's stupid to pay the $5/mo for nothing (there are so very many other charges for no reason, why have one we can get out of?). We've only been slammed once, at least, so I guess that's below average.

Recently I've needed to make long distance calls for an illustrating job, so I used Skype, which is free in the US until January. The sound quality was the same as a regular phone call.

[ex-narumi508.livejournal.com]

We got rid of ma bell...for digital phone

we then got rid of digital phone...our cable/internet/phone bill was full of hidden charges. We had to have them strengthen the connection since when we got it we had so many tvs and computers running that anytime someone called we would be disconnected from the internet.

Since removing it and other services we didn't need...our bill has actually gone up $80 and they can't seem to be able to explain why... >_>

[jameshanrahan.livejournal.com]

Just this month I noticed my phone bill had picked up an additional $20 due to new fees and raises in fees that were previously lower.

[bobguthrie.livejournal.com]

Dustmeat gave us a hint on the all digital package (same they have at home,)... Cable Broadband (8Mbs,) Digital Phone, Cable: 80.00$ a month (all you can phone calls in the US for free.)

With our prior set-up, DSL (2Mbs) alone: 250.00$ a month Xp

[smudge-dragon.livejournal.com]

When we lived in our old place, we had Cable internet and cable Phone combined all from one provider. And for the most part we never had any trouble. Now that we're in our new place, a whole whopping 5 miles from the old, we've had our provders split with our phone only to be from At&t. We've hated it. We want our cable phone back. GAH! But nooooo, SBC/At&t has the area sewn up good. Bah.

[hecatemahadevi.livejournal.com]

I need long distance service, since my roommate refuses to get a cell phone with a local area code. Every time I call him, it's a 10¢ connection fee; can't remember offhand how much it is per minute. But huff.

Got another question for you.

[hecatemahadevi.livejournal.com]

I'm determined to make someone buy me WoW (it's only $20 on Amazon, but if I buy it, I'll jinx myself and not like it). I don't have a credit card, however, and charging the monthly fees to my debit card is not the best of ideas. How and where do you purchase prepaid timecards?

Re: Got another question for you.

[doronjosama.livejournal.com]

I buy them at the local video game store. ^_^ EB Games or GameStop (since they are now the same company) should carry them, but they also have them at Best Buy, Circuit City and those kinds of places.

For Xmas last year, I ended up getting like three game time cards from folks who didn't know what else to get me, and it was *awesome*. ^_^

Re: Got another question for you.

[willworks.livejournal.com]

You can also get the timecards on Amazon or at Wal-Mart.

[the-mouthpiece.livejournal.com]

I abhor my telephone service. I use my phone less and less each month and yet the bill gets higher and higher. I've had no end of difficult phone calls with their sales and customer service departments, and the moment cable becomes a viable alternative (It is absurdly priced) I, too am making the move to digital.

[ichbinkeinenazi.livejournal.com]

Ma Bell can suck it. That place changed so much since my granddaddy helped lay the first fiber optic cables in Texas (he was a line man for many years). I haven't had a land line for a few years now, what with the cellamaphone and whatnot.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Up until recently, I had no long-distance charges, and a really basic local call rate for poor people (me).

Three months ago, I was forced to make a long-distance call due to my car insurance place (for my car that died three weeks after I got it legal) closing, and transferring my account to fucking LaVerne, which is in Death Valley someplace, and not within biking distance as the previous place was. I called to cancel my insurance, seeing as the car was dead.

So that month, I got charged $10 for a 2-minute phone call. Only one dollar of that was for the call itself. $2.49 of it was for the privilege of being told I owed them money. The next month, they charged me $9 for a no-minute call, including, again, $2.49 for the privilege of being informed of this. Who is the CEO of AT&T again? Because I'm going to stab him in the eye with a fork, should we ever cross paths. If I have to fork-stab everybody between him and me in the process, so be it.

[theuberbob.livejournal.com]

I have been increasingly disturbed by the never-ending amounts of fees that AT&T (or SWB or whoever) seems to add to my phone bills every month and have been thinking about getting the internet/phone/digital cable combo. I'm already paying about close to $100 per month on basic cable and phone service and if the deal isn't much more expensive I wouldn't mind upgrading to digital cable and high-speed internet. I'd also be able to receive phone calls while online (which I can't now; in fact the only reason I have a land line is for internet access). Let me know how it goes.

-Bob-