AT&T Will Keep Your Money If You Cancel TV Or Internet In Middle of Billing Cycle (gizmodo.com) 99
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The telecom giant has announced the end of its prorated credits for some subscribers who cancel a service in the middle of a billing period. AT&T bills service for DirecTV, U-verse TV, AT&T Phone, AT&T Internet, and Fixed Wireless Internet in advance. It previously offered the option to receive a credit for any unused days in a month when a subscriber canceled before the next billing period, but it will now force many customers to ride out the month with nothing in return. The change goes into effect on January 14, 2019, in most states, so if you're considering a change, it's time to plan ahead. If you're even one day into your billing month, you'll presumably have to pay for the full period, according to the company's new policy. You get to keep the service you don't want for that period of time, but, of course, you're canceling because you don't want it. The change will not apply to customers in California, Illinois, New York and, in some instances, Michigan.
Big companies look for ways to be abusive. (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish the U.S. had a functioning government.
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This only takes effect in RED states
...except for those 17 (out of 20 total) blue states that it also effects.
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It's not the government's job. Why should the government step between you and a company you have a contract with.
They're not charging you for something you're not getting. Your service still lasts until the end of the billing period. You agreed to purchase something for 30 days, you're getting 30 days.
Personally I prefer the prorating. I think it's good customer service and extends good will to the consumer. I don't like this change. However, I don't see how this is a regulation issue.
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Just wait until they learn about ten-year contracts.
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"Americans want to be abused.
I wish Americans had a functioning brain."
do you see how easy it is to find the source of the problem?
Why would your government intervene, when you want to sign a contract that has so many constraints?
Why would you support a service that is after your money and doesn't respect you as a customer.
This is one of the reasons that "free market" fails, because customers are stupid and when they fuck up they want their Daddy to take care of the bad guys.
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"Americans want to be abused. I wish Americans had a functioning brain." do you see how easy it is to find the source of the problem? Why would your government intervene, when you want to sign a contract that has so many constraints? Why would you support a service that is after your money and doesn't respect you as a customer.
This is one of the reasons that "free market" fails, because customers are stupid and when they fuck up they want their Daddy to take care of the bad guys.
Because they've got themselves into a situation where they have government sanctioned monopolies and they don't seem to see a problem with that so it becomes a case of if you want tv or internet you gotta bend over or fuck off. They are the choices.
Translation (Score:1)
AT&T has been watching you all threatening to cut your cables in the previous threads and would like to remind you all to take your best fucking shot.
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Orange man bad.
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They may think they're doing this in Oregon, but they'll find out otherwise soon enough. :)
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I'm sure they will be able to offer Kate a decent size incentive to not make an issue of it.
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That's about the dumbest thing I've heard about local politics since `92 when "Zeus" ran for the State Senate wearing a spaghetti strainer and a garter belt. His slogan was: "Bring Back the Big Band Era!"
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Well, I just moved back here back in 2015, so not familiar with Oregon politics before then.
Is this Zeus fellow related to Canada's own cosplay king, Trudeau?
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Well get a clue. This isn't podunkville where all the politicians are corrupt. Many of our politicians are like Governor Brown or Senator Wyden, and they don't even have a lot of personal wealth. So waving your hands presumptively as if "politician = corrupt" is just stupid shit you brought with you from wherever you came from. Their pay is actually quite good and if they're not greedy jerks there is no reason for the corruption you're so ready to presume that we would accept here. But we have a long histor
Ma Bell up to its old tricks! (Score:3, Insightful)
This kind of crap is why AT&T was broken up in the first place! I'm happy that I'm not one of their customers, but I feel bad for all those people who are.
Between their abusive policies, lack of investment in infrastructure (coverage sucks in anything but metro areas), and their discontinuations of services (No Satellite for You!), they are batting a million!
There are large swathes of the country that do not have access to broadband sufficient to replace their Satellite TV, so I guess that'll leave Hughes to pick up the pieces!
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They are going to discontinue satellite TV in 15 or 20 years. By then, we should be an all fiber nation. Hopefully.
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This AT&T and the AT&T that was broken up are not the same company. This AT&T started as a cellular company that bought the AT&T name when the last visage of the broken up AT&T finally went bankrupt.
That being said it is right in line with the abusive practices of cellular companies in general.
In the long run its pretty unimportant except to people living on the edge though. If the difference between your economic survival is a partial payment back from AT&T then you probably shouldn
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cancel at the end of the cycle (Score:2)
I did this when I left AT&T last month and no bill
I HATE AT&T (Score:3)
Nuff said!
worse in Germany (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:worse in Germany (Score:5, Funny)
... and have to present a copy of the "Abmeldebescheinigung" ...
That made me think of the "safe word" scene [youtube.com] in the movie Eurotrip [wikipedia.org]:
Sexy girl: Bring out the testical clamps!
Guy: Oh Crap! Flugan..basja..sbiner holzeen?
Sexy girl: do u mean Fluggaenkoecchicebolsen?
Which you can apparently get on a t-shirt [amazon.com]
In related news, AT&T will also be using testicle clamps on people canceling their service.
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Oh yes please.
i'd become a customer just so I could cancel.
APK.
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Except, of course, we are not literally living in the The Man In The High Castle world. This is America (the real one).
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As a German I am surprised by your approach.
If you have to cancel a contract in advance, you don't wait until the deadline.
You immediately send a letter that includes the date at which you want to cancel.
I sometimes just write "cancel at the next possible date" (but now that I think of it, it must have been years since I've canceled a contract).
As for Kabel Deutschland, the 3 months are mentioned in paragraph 46(8) of the Telekommunikationsgesetz. And it has been proven in court that the 3 months start on t
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As a German I am surprised by your approach....I sometimes just write "cancel at the next possible date"....As for Kabel Deutschland, the 3 months are mentioned in paragraph 46(8) of the Telekommunikationsgesetz. And it has been proven in court that the 3 months start on the day you move....
I cancelled my cellphone exactly that way and had no phone for my last four months in Germany. But I still needed some way to communicate, line up my new job, organize my move, etc. so I was forced to wait until I moved before cancelling Kabel Deutschland. I guess I could have used Internet cafes for my last four months in Germany. Either way, I left after seven years because of a million small things, the sum of which made life unbearable.
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Why not just stiff them?...
I was in the process of selling a house and had open accounts. I would have stiffed them if I could have. I did stiff the home insurance. They demanded a full year of payment after I sold the house. I wrote them a letter and asked "if the house burns down 12 months after I sold it, could I collect on the damages?"
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This one weird trick could save you money! (Score:1)
Cancel at the end of your billing cycle.
Could be worse - my experience with Bell Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago, I had Bell Canada satellite service and tried to cancel.
They said they wanted to keep me as a customer and wouldn't put through the cancellation and give me free service for six months and if I still didn't want it no problem. I tried repeatedly, during those six months, to end the service including dropping the receiver off at a Bell store after three months (fortunately, I made the clerk sign a receipt for the receiver).
At the end of six months I got a bill from the Bell for the six months that had just past. After another three months of fighting with them, they demanded that I pay rent for the two months I had the receiver before returning it.
The problem with cutting the cord is that the people who provide the cord will do everything they can to keep you from doing it.
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The problem with cutting the cord is that the people who provide the cord will do everything they can to keep you from doing it.
Just stop paying. They will terminate service for non-payment. After service has been terminated, pay your final bill before it goes to collections.
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Just stop paying. They will terminate service for non-payment. After service has been terminated, pay your final bill before it goes to collections.
This is terrible advice! Collections or not they are going to ding your credit.
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This sounds like the representative you were talking to scammed you into agreeing to a contract extension with a 6 month promotional bonus. You may not have signed anything, but they almost certainly entered it into the system as if you did.
As far as I can tell, they can't legally prevent you from cancelling service. They can charge cancellation fees based on whatever contract is in force at the time, but preventing cancellation is not allowed. That doesn't prevent them from using underhanded and even illeg
Haven't been an ATT customer in years (Score:2)
...and this is one of the many reasons why. I flushed them out of my life years ago, both residentially AND commercially, and I often am recommending to colleagues to get rid of them as well.
It's one of those decisions you end up asking yourself why you didn't make it sooner. Even comcast is better than they are.
I'm fine with this. (Score:1)
Lots of services don't give partial month refunds, and they've given us lead time to accept their terms, or terminate our accounts when the old policy is still in effect.
Re: I'm fine with this. (Score:2)
If you've been paying a monthly service fee for a few years, you have clearly demonstrated the issue is not with the product or the legitimacy of the business.
Re: I'm fine with this. (Score:2)
And you know you were paying month by month for the whole month. Stop making excuses for willfully ignorant consumers who refuse to be responsible for their own actions.
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This service changes the terms regularly by sneaking fee increases into the monthly bill. They don't notify you of this. Hell, they didn't even notify customers about this change to pro-rated cancelations. A support website article is not a notification.
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Agreed. Most services I've canceled have told me to enjoy the rest of my pay cycle, It will expire on mm/dd and I will not be billed further.
Now if I have a contract and cancel, I may need to pay a cancellation fee to avoid further billing. It also could end immediately or at the end of the next pay cycle..
The real headline is (Score:1)
"AT&T requires 30 days notice for cancellations."
Which has probably been in their contract for years, and they're only now starting to enforce it.
Not an unusual contract term in any way for that sort of service.
Nothing to see here, go back to your cells.
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This is not the same thing as a notice for cancellation. In fact, it could make it worse compounded together. For example, if you only couldn't cancel in the middle of a billing cycle to not lose money, you could cancel the day after your next billing cycle starts and only have to pay for one month you don't want. If you combine that with 30 days notice in a calendar month with 30 days, you would have to pay for a whole second unwanted month because 30 days later would be into the following billing cycle
Time To Cancel (Score:3)
The change goes into effect on January 14, 2019, in most states, so if you're considering a change, it's time to plan ahead.
It's time for everyone to cancel their AT&T service(s) before Jan. 14, 2019.
I'd laugh if AT&T saw a huge spike in cancellations over the next month. Let's see if we cannot accelerate the cord cutting [usatoday.com] even more.
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with no caps (9999GB)
A large cap is still a cap.
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Did they not push it to 10TB for marketing reasons? or is the field limited in the number of digits it can display?
California (Score:1)
Note that this does not apply in California, because all us hippy-ass flower children stoner bra-less left-coastie elites got together and passed a law against large corporations pulling horsesh-- like this.
Enjoy thy deregulation, flyover states.
AC (Anonymous Californian)
desperate measures (Score:2)