AT&T's Bad Math Strikes MythBusters' Savage 305
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the do-they-know-he-has-explosives dept.
from the do-they-know-he-has-explosives dept.
etherlad writes "MythBusters' Adam Savage got a bill charging him $11,000 for 'a few hours' of Web surfing while in Canada, using his AT&T USB Mercury modem. AT&T gave him a quote on the data rate: '.015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb.' Looks like AT&T didn't learn from Verizon's inability to do math. AT&T is also claiming Savage downloaded over 9 GB, which he calls 'frakking impossible.' Savage's huge following on twitter got him a speedy response by AT&T."
Soz this mean we get a cellphone special now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bust the all the myths that the companies quote about why they need to charge what they do, reliability, and especially that there is competition in the marketplace?
Customer service? (Score:4, Insightful)
FTA:
[AT&T] hasn't exactly been garnering positive reactions from its legions of Twitter-using members.
I'd say. If their customer service is anything like cell phone companies up here, it probably takes more than 140 characters to navigate their phone tree to talk to a human!
- RG>
Re:Lucky for them (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the fans.
You don't mess with people that blow stuff up for a living.
Even if they're nerds.
these insane usage charges (Score:5, Insightful)
anyone else think those companies are crooks for charging per kilobyte like that is complete bull s(*@# ? just loading a damn web page like cnn.com is almost 1MB so that would be 1$
Famous power (Score:1, Insightful)
So all you need to do is be famous with lots of support and then you will get taken care of? What if this happened to a "normal" person?
Re:Verizon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not reading the article title much less the summary or article?
Well, *THERE'S* your problem.
Iran and AT&T vs. Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Iran and AT&T vs. Twitter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:He should'a known... (Score:2, Insightful)
".015 cents, or a penny and a half"
Let me guess... whichever is larger?
I can't believe no on Slashdot has pointed out that .015 cents != a penny and a half
.015 dollars = a penny and a half.
Re:Let's not be cynical (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. I agree, and so does Adam [twitter.com].
"I agree with everyone: it shouldn't just work for me. The data carriers MUST stop thinking in kilobytes and start thinking in customers."
Is this really "only" a problem with a huge bill (Score:5, Insightful)
This stuff always makes the headlines when the bill amounts to 1,000's of dollars. The real problem is that there are probably a constant stream of people being billed $5, $20, maybe $50 for the usage. When they pass it off and just pay it, then the company lines its pockets with easy money.
A Billing System Deficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't make any sense to me. Most people are unable to pay the bill, and anyone that can afford it has the resources to fight them. Either way, it generates a lot of bad PR and very little revenue. I'm surprised Apple hasn't put more pressure on them, these stories are frequently reported as "man receives $10,000 iPhone bill."
Re:Iran and AT&T vs. Twitter (Score:3, Insightful)
Wireless broadband data charges are insane... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone else think it's bordering on insanity the charges they want to levy against people for wireless data transfers? (Text messages is a whole other topic...) Even the new download caps some cable ISPs are setting for home broadband are still at least 100GB for a connection you spend ~$50 for. Why is it worth thousands of dollars to send a GB of data when a normal phone conversation is going to take up far more network bandwidth...
Re:Iran and AT&T vs. Twitter (Score:2, Insightful)
You've mistaken the mob for democracy.
Re:He should'a known... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why call centre scripts should never use symbols, like "$1.50", or in this case "$0.015". They should explicitly write out what the person will say, i.e., "one dollar fifty", or "one point five cents". This is because people are incredibly stupid/prone to fluffing things up under stress, especially in a dull repetitive job dealing with annoyed customers.
Anyway, 9 GB in a few hours eh? For casual web browsing? To get to 9 GB would require watching TEN HOURS of TWO MBIT video streams. I suspect YouTube is 500kbps so that's FORTY HOURS of YouTube. To consistently get two mbit on a 3G modem would be a miracle.
Re:Is this really "only" a problem with a huge bil (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, more likely, the guy on the other end will take your name, phone number, address, and a statement of the complaint. Then they'll reassure you that they'll get right on it, and thanks for calling. Click.
Unless you're a TV celebrity, a Congressman, or at least an appellate judge good luck getting them to do a thing for you.
Re:Is this really "only" a problem with a huge bil (Score:3, Insightful)
ALWAYS demand an itemised bill. ALWAYS. No exceptions, EVER
No problem sir - we'll just add on the itemized bill option for $4.95 per month. If you'd like it actually mailed to you instead of buried on a website I can do that too for only $3.95 more.
Oh, since you're concerned about getting raped on minutes you don't intend to use, for a mere $6.95 we'll let you set a limit on your usage so that you won't get billed for unintended calls. No, that won't help with roaming charges. We're looking into an experimental $14.95 service to handle those - would you like to be in our pilot group?
The phone company: all about finding clever ways to charge you for stuff that should be required as a matter of law...
More regulation on abusive practices is needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Celebrity status? (Score:4, Insightful)
Being charged to receive cell calls makes sense. In other countries such as the UK calling a cell phone costs the caller more than calling a landline. How do you know which you called? Cell phones have their own area code. In the US there are no area codes for cell phones so there is no way for a caller to know. Conceptually the call goes to the regular area code and then has to be transmitted by radio to your phone and the latter bit is why you are charged for incoming and outgoing calls. Of course it doesn't work like that under the hood any more but it used to in the begining. Either way someone is paying extra for the cell phone call cost.
Some countries don't have this system but they aren't comparable to the US. All of the UK, NI and various islands fit in 2/3 of California. Germany is the same size as Montana. The scale is very different.
SMS receiving used to be free. The reason for the charges is because of a corrupt market. The carriers have a cartel. They fought very hard against number portability. There are two different radio systems, and even the one used by the rest of the world (GSM) is on different frequencies. Phones are sold cheap but lock you into a two year contract and you are unlikely to be able to use a phone between carriers even if it is unlocked. All this minimizes the ability of consumers to change carriers. The cartel players also by some miraculous coincidence charge exactly the same for SMS. Whenever one raises the price, they all do.
A secondary issue is that voice is charged too cheaply since that is what the headline number looked at by consumers is. Consequently the carriers make up for it by nickel and diming on every single other thing they can, including SMS.
Re:More regulation on abusive practices is needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually for the most part they cost virtually nothing since the signal that the sms data is in is being sent ANYWAY, they just stick a little extra data in there and plain text is microscopic in terms of how much data it makes up. Isn't it something on the order of a few bytes for a word?