AT&T's Bad Math Strikes MythBusters' Savage 305
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?
Re:Soz this mean we get a cellphone special now? (Score:4, Funny)
maybe one about RT's with exploding batteries (Score:2)
maybe one about RT's with exploding batteries.
More regulation on abusive practices is needed (Score:3, Insightful)
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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?
Re:You're fucking stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Sir, you get one "fuck" per post for free on the Basic Slashdot PricePlan(tm) as you can see on page 2539 of your contract. We assumed from your post that you've decided to take advantage or automatic update process to the Slashdot Super High Enterprise Class Ultra Premium PricePlan(tm) as described in page 1845 of your contract. Yes, that is $199.99 per month plus sale tax and there's a $9599.99 plus sales tax service charge if you change to a plan with a lower monthly price in the first 48 months. Page 3453 of the contract. Well then your copy is updated. I've got the latest contract here, dated 29th of June. Yes 29th of June 2009. Um Sir, there's no need for that language ... Sir the audio quality on this line is kind of bad and I can't hear you very well, and I'll need to change to my headset. CLICK. BRRRR.
Re:You're fucking stupid (Score:4, Funny)
Sir, you get one "fuck" per post for free on the Basic Slashdot PricePlan(tm)
Slashdot is pimping?
Re:Soz this mean we get a cellphone special now? (Score:5, Funny)
I have seen this before - what is it about saying 0.02 cent when you mean 2 cent or 0.02 dollar?
One time in science class, grade 10, we had to do something where we were given some basic info about an object made out of aluminum and the market cost of aluminum. We had to figure out the raw-material cost of the object, assuming no loss during construction. So we had to use our lessons on density and whatnot to figure out the exact mass of the object and then simply multiply by price.
Problem is, most of us screwed up the ".02 cents per gram" (or whatever) part and did .02 dollars, so we were off by a factor of 100.
Class response was... informative. The few observant students who got it looked smug. Some smacked their heads at missing that. A few were severely pissed that they got the question wrong over the one part of the question that had nothing to do with science. One got that part right but botched the density part of the problem. The underachievers were either confused by the whole thing or glad they didn't even try.
And one guy... one guy spent ten minutes arguing with the teacher that .02 dollars and .02 cents were the same thing. Half a blackboard of diagrams later and she gave up trying to explain it.
Now I know where that guy works.
He should'a known... (Score:5, Funny)
".015 cents, or a penny and a half"
Let me guess... whichever is larger?
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Does that mean they "only" over-charged by 100X, so the bill should be $110 for a few hours? That's still outrageous, no?
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It was roaming outside of the country, so it's not that bad, considering how much voice minutes are, too.
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So the pricing is only as ridiculous as the ridiculous pricing on another item?
Re:He should'a known... (Score:4, Interesting)
I was up in Canada for a coupe months, a while back (like, a few years ago). We learned quickly that the calls were expensive. Luckily, I got my first bill at home shortly after my arrival, so it was very obvious, and only several hundred dollars high. My work reimbursed my phone expense, and my cell calls suddenly became "state your emergency" and "I'll call you back from my land line", which was actually my Vonage phone plugged into a wireless bridge in the hotel. :) They still got me for international roaming, which was still a bastard.
That's actually one of the nice things with the Vonage phone. If I'm out of town for more than a couple days, I bring a spare handset and the box, and plug it in when I settle in. I've gotten some strange looks wandering the halls of a hotel on my cordless phone, but the calls didn't cost me any extra. :)
American cell phone providers are generally terrible. Our phones, for the most part, won't roam to Europe or Asia, but I've had people from Europe come here without any substantial problems. Ya, ya, I know the technical reasons. I don't like them, nor the contractual reasons. Cell phones are for portability, why can't I get on a plane in New York, and hop off in Hong Kong, and call home? For a 1 week job in Amsterdam, I picked up a cheap prepaid just so I had a number people could call.
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In Sprint's defense, they are already partially part GSM. Since they acquired Nextel in 200_ they've been operating the biggest iDEN network around (which is like being the smartest kid in special ed, but take what victories you can), and iDEN actually runs on a GSM backbone with extra spiffy bits to allow push-to-talk and the like. Hence, they are partially part GSM.
Re:He should'a known... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you divide the larger by the smaller.
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No, no, no. You divide the larger by the difference.
Re:He should'a known... (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no... You do it like this [youtube.com]!
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".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:He should'a known... (Score:5, Funny)
Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail.
Re:He should'a known... (Score:5, Funny)
Its ok, you can take your agression out on the printer.
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I wonder what would happen if you started working for the Tax dept, then again maybe AIG or Citibank needs your skills more
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I knew that... geez. Do I really have to explain the joke? Whenever there's two options, it's always whichever one is better for them... sort of like the 20,000 mile / 10 year warranty: whichever comes sooner.
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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.
No one pointed out the mistake because a) it is mentioned in the summary ("Looks like AT&T didn't learn from Verizon's inability to do math") and b) everyone here knows how to do elementary school arithmetic, so no one felt the need to point out the obvious.
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I can't believe no on Slashdot has pointed out that .015 cents != a penny and a half
That's because that is suppose to be the obvious part, but isn't to surprisingly few people. That's the whole point.
The rate really is 1.5 cents per KB, but it is constantly quoted as .015 cents.. that is, the number is typed out in dollars (.015) but because everyone knows that a price in fractions of dollars is really talking about cents, that's the unit spoken by a lot of people when interpreting it. "Point zero one five cents." And they don't understand that they have changed the value.
It's not a
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.
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.015 cents per kilobit (Score:5, Informative)
* down with the kibi prefix!
Lucky for them (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure what a crowd of angry MythBusters fans would do, but I'm sure that it would involve large amounts of kinetic energy.
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.
Re:Lucky for them (Score:5, Funny)
Even if they're nerds.
You don't even mess with pissed off nerds. [userfriendly.org]
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The cause of, and answer to all lifes problems.
no way in hell! (Score:4, Funny)
from the people who brought you this commercial... (Score:5, Funny)
IDK MY BFF JILL DOZ MTH 4 ATT
Re:from the people who brought you this commercial (Score:5, Funny)
Re:from the people who brought you this commercial (Score:5, Funny)
Math busted.
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and this [tinypic.com] is what I think of her math skillz
Celebrity status? (Score:5, Funny)
I wish I could have a mass following behind me that I could use to blackmail evil corporations.... Instead, here I am just clicking away at every Microsoft ad I see hoping that it'll eventually rack up some respectable cost to them.
-bitterness, sad face-
Re:Celebrity status? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, when I was young, man moons ago, we used to have these things called "consumer protection laws". You could walk over to your phone and call a government hotline for help. Of course, you'd get a massive shock when you picked up the phone because of the electrostatic action of your polyester leisure suit, so I'd have to conclude that on the whole things aren't any better or worse than they used to be.
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Of course, you'd get a massive shock when you picked up the phone because of the electrostatic action of your polyester leisure suit, so I'd have to conclude that on the whole things aren't any better or worse than they used to be.
While I can't definitively say that fashion has improved much, I'm pretty sure it's not gotten worse that the "polyester leisure suit". The only shock you would receive now would be if you actually got to speak to a real person on the other end of the phone, because customer service was much better man [sic] moons ago than it is now.
Re:Celebrity status? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, he's got 55,000 and growing followers on twitter. In the last 7 hours he's sent out a dozen or so tweets. To 55,000 people. 25 cents (.25 dollars) per text == AT&T making a lot of money off Adam's outrage.
He just got commision =)
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He also happens to have a TV show.
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Given that his cell phone was turned off by AT&T (as a result of his alleged overage charge), I have a hard time believing AT&T got any money from Mr. Savage's tweets.
Besides, even if he had sent the tweets via cell phone, all 55,000 of his followers would have had to be 1) AT&T subscribers and 2) set up their Twitter accounts to receive Savage's updates via text messages and 3) paid for those text messages at the basic rate (not via some kind of unlimited usage plan). I don't know about you,
Re:Celebrity status? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh America! :(
Being charged money to RECEIVE SMS and phone calls, absoloutely apalling, my condolences.
- The rest of the world.
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.
Let's not be cynical (Score:5, Funny)
Savage's huge following on twitter got him a speedy response by AT&T."
I'm sure the response would have been just as fast if he wasn't famous and wasn't using Twitter. These large companies have professional Human Resource departments to make sure that the customer service experience is good.
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http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ (blogspot.com)
It's long (27 minutes) and old, I know. Still worth a listen if you haven't heard it before. Also still funny if you have.
Re:Let's not be cynical (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot the part about him having in depth knowledge of explosives.
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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."
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"I agree with everyone: it shouldn't just work for me. The data carriers MUST stop thinking in kilobytes and start thinking in customers."
Why would they? What are you going to do if they screw you, anyway [youtube.com]?
Re:Let's not be cynical (Score:5, Funny)
The data carriers MUST stop thinking in kilobytes and start thinking in customers."
Aaaaaah! Get out of my head! You're not allowed to think in me! ... why do I have a sudden urge to buy Lightspeed Briefs?
Verizon? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, *THERE'S* your problem.
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Not reading the article title much less the summary or article?
Well, *THERE'S* your problem.
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>
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$
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at time of that post, this page would cost ya 60+ cents
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/me has been drinking ;/
Re:these insane usage charges (Score:4, Interesting)
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It does. Install the Web Developer toolbar. :)
Then click Disable > Java, Disable > JavaScript, CSS > Disable Styles > All Styles, Images > Disable Images > All Images. Voila. You're now running Netscape 1.0 (sans images); an adjustment to font settings and you're using Lynx.
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Opera is pretty good at it - it has toolbar buttons to disable images (or only show cached), CSS, and so on. I'm pretty sure I've seen similar Firefox plugins, too.
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This might be what you're looking for [mozilla.org].
First response... (Score:5, Funny)
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Turn in your Geek card. The corrected quote is:
"I reject your reality and substitute my own"
Also applicable to Ahmedinejad when the election results came in.
Re:First response... (Score:5, Funny)
Or Michael Jackson when they told him he was black.
Or alive.
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Now that's Michael is dead, who will rear his children?
Iran and AT&T vs. Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Iran and AT&T vs. Twitter (Score:4, Insightful)
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Twitter is naught but the horn by which the crowd hears itself.
AT&T and Iran are being faced with that most awesome and powerful of forces: human beings. Acting in concert. Each of their own free will. :) Democracy rules.
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If only... (Score:2)
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.
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Review each line of EVERY bill. Last month they attempted to charge me data twice. I called them and told them where to look on the bill. I got $50 credited to my account because I caught it. ($35 for double charge, $15 for who the hell knows why). ALWAYS do a line item inventory of your bill, EVERY month. ALWAYS contest suspicious charges. Usually they can be cleared up with nothing more then a 20 minute phone call.
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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.
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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 exper
Okay, I'll bite... (Score:4, Interesting)
".015 cents": 9,437,184 KB * $0.00015 = $1,415.5776
"a penny and a half": 9,437,184 KB * $0.015 = $141,557.76
Since the published data roaming rate in Canada is $0.015/KB, let's go with "a penny and a half".
$11,000 of usage at $0.015/KB equals 733,333.33333333...KB or 716.145833MB.
So not only do they not know the difference between a cent and a dollar, but their system for measuring data transfer is also off by a factor of ~12.87... unless they somehow billed him for
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It's per kilobit, not byte. 9,437,184 * 8 * $0.00015 = 11,324.6208 ~ 11,000
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:A Billing System Deficiency (Score:4, Informative)
I use Alltel. Driving to work a week ago I got a text message saying that my account had high usage and I needed to call them. My wife had just spent a week on the other side of the country, her cell is an additional line on my plan. We spent a lot of hours playing WoW and talking while she was gone, and I didn't know she was roaming. $600 worth of charges. Alltel saw the problem, contacted me, and offered me a plan upgrade for $20 a month that gave me unlimited nation-wide roaming, and that by doing it, it would be retroactive and I wouldn't be hit with a $600 phone bill.
THAT is customer service. I don't know what AT&T provides, but it ain't customer service. Cellular service in the USA has always been hideously monopolistic compared to a lot of the world, and somehow they get away with it. Hopefully that will change some day, probably the same day that I can easily buy an iPhone from an Alltel store and not have to deal with AT&T.
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My favorite quotes from the article (Score:5, Funny)
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...
why is it so expensive anyway? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't understand why data is so hugely expensive in the US anyway. In Europe, you get unlimited data plans starting at EU 5/month (EU 25/month for unlimited 3.5G usage). Or you can buy 3G access day-by-day for EU 2.50/day. Some plans have international data roaming caps anywhere within Europe at EU 15/day.
Solution: prepaid international SIM card (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't use US carrier SIM cards for international travel: you get no cost control and high rates for data.
Your best bet is to get a local, prepaid SIM card. In some countries, you can get day-by-day data subscriptions for a few bucks a day.
If you can't do that, your next best bet is to get an international prepaid SIM card. Their rates are a little higher, but they are still fairly low, and they are fairly low across the entire globe.
Either way, you get cost control: they can't charge you more than you prepaid.
Search on Google; there are many companies offering this service. Oh, and you need a GSM phone, preferably one that supports tethering. Most Nokias running Symbian will work and you just plug them into your laptop and they work as a 3G modem; they also have good E-mail readers.
(Nokias are a bit old-fashioned in that they ask you for every Internet connection you make; normally, that's a nuisance, but for data roaming, it's great.)
Only in the US... (Score:4, Informative)
Only in the US do you have this insanity. I'm returning from a trip to Stockholm and you can get unlimited 7.2MB broadband for about 40 bucks a month including taxes. 25 if you already have a phone plan. My swedish is lacking, but poking around with google translator I didn't find anything about bandwidth caps.
Again: $25-40US for UNLIMITED 7.2Mb broadband. Including taxes.
Off the top of my head, not a single major WIRED provider in the US even matches that price ... and many are talking about implementing bandwidth caps. Wireless? Bah. No big provider is unlimited and you're coughing up at least $60 + taxes and good luck actually getting 7.2Mb.
Same happened to me with Rogers (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a Canadian client of Rogers, and while we were on vacation in Mexico a few months ago, we decided to use the Palm Treo we brought for some basic web surfing and email checking (swine flu panic, get some information for airports and whatnot).
So I call their handy and free 611 customer service, and ask for roaming charges. "What phone do you have?" she asks. "Palm Treo 650." She then tells me the charges for data are "Three cents per kilobyte." - "Sure?" - "Yes."
It sounded cheap, but not too cheap to be impossible. To be sure, I went to an internet cafe at the corner, and checked Rogers website. Impossible to know for sure, but I could find two information: 3 cents per MEGAbyte, applied to ordinary phones, and 3 cents per KILObyte applied to smartphones, especially the iPhone.
So we used it, thinking it would be 3/KB, but reasonably because, afterall, it's only a Treo and there's not much you can do on the web with it.
Upon my return, I got a bill for 80$ in data roaming charges. I fought it, had the issue escalated, I even DARED them to "Go listen to the recorded conversation" that they keep on file for "training and enhancement purposes". They finally caved in and removed all the charges from my bill, except 10$, which was satisfactory.
It's really bad when you are considered guilty until you can prove innocence.
Rogers do that kind of stuff frequently. I just upgraded to an iPhone and had to call them because each and every rebate/discount I previously had, and each bargain/rebate I managed to negociate on my new contract, they all disappeared mysteriously from the new invoice. Of coures it's a mistake. Of course the system had a hiccup and my order was not processed fully. Riiight.
But all in all, because I'm quite vocal about my consumer rights and will gladly voice them to the companies I deal with, I end up with a pretty interesting contract, and the services are good, so I'm, afterall, a happy customer.
Re:Its 1.5 cents per KB (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been around since data was shoveled through modems that were so slow that you could actually type faster than the modem could transfer, and data was sent dial-up over expensive long distance phone lines.
And it was still cheaper than 1.5 cents/KB.
Does AT&T send a free jar of Vaseline with each new contract?
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The problem is if you *call* in, because, say you're travelling and have a phone but no good net connection, they say on the phone it is point zero one five cents per kilobyte. I know, because I've called and asked and spent the same 'stupid' time explaining to them I wanted to know if that point zero one five dollars per kilobyte or point zero one five cents, and had to explain that they're NOT THE SAME THING. So, yes, he was very likely quoted exactly the point zero one five cents rate.
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Essentially this is a way in which they hose anyone who fails to get a dedicated data package, and a separate data package when they travel overseas. In other words, they will ream you, it's only a matter of degree.
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It clearly states in the contract that the rates... are subject to change and new rates can be published by AT&T at any time.
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They don't offer any lube.