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AT&T makes it more expensive to cancel DirecTV or Internet service
AT&T will start charging customers for the full month after they cancel TV or Internet service, ending its customer-friendly practice of providing a prorated credit for the final month.
Even if you cancel on the first day of a new billing period, you'll be charged for the full month and service will continue for the rest of the month whether you want it or not. To avoid paying for a month of service you don't want, you'd need to cancel by the last day of the previous billing period.
The change will take effect on January 14, 2019 and apply even when a customer is paying on a month-to-month basis and no longer under contract.
"We bill in advance for DirecTV, U-verse TV, AT&T Phone, AT&T Internet, and Fixed Wireless Internet accounts per our service agreements," AT&T said in its announcement of the change. "Currently, if you cancel any of these services, we give you prorated credits for the remaining days in your bill period. Starting January 14, 2019, if you disconnect these services before the bill period is over, we won't offer those prorated credits anymore. But, you can still use your services until the last day of your bill period."
AT&T noted that it already charges for the full final month when you cancel mobile service. But instead of changing the mobile policy to match the more forgiving TV-and-broadband policy, AT&T is changing the TV-and-broadband policy to match the more draconian terms of its cellular service.
"We're making this change so our video and broadband services follow the same billing policies as our mobility services," AT&T wrote.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:28PM
"We're making this change so our video and broadband services follow the same billing policies as our mobility services," AT&T wrote.
Yeah, and I'd really like that nice bridge in Brooklyn you have on offer.
It would have been far less work to change the cellular service to match the other services, but that would have benefitted customers, not AT&T. Which is why they've chosen the more labor-intensive, and up-front costlier approach, of downgrading all of the other services' policies to match the cellular policy: because they'll make up for it in all the added costs they get to charge their erstwhile customers. "Screw 'em on the way out" seems to be their corporate policy.
Reminds me of when nvidia crippled their Linux driver to bring it "into alignment" with their windows driver -- because it would force customers to pay for more expensive hardware to do what they'd been doing on their Linux hosts prior. All that's missing is the snarky tech report response to their customers' questions of "what happend?" with "the driver/policy is behaving as expected" with or without the implicit "you're screwed and we're making more money off you, ha ha" footnote.