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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the get-you-coming-and-going dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:57PM (2 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:57PM (#769650) Journal

    It's not a horrible practice, but it's not what I would call customer friendly. That's okay though, Customer Service is mostly a figment of your imagination nowadays anyway. You think it's bad with having to jump through the robo hoops to get a real person now. Just think about the wonderful possibilities when 99% of the Customer Service department is replaced with AI.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:46PM

      by aiwarrior (1812) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:46PM (#769673) Journal

      I second the meh. Well if you know that your commitments are due in a given time, then prepare for it.

      How tough is it that you keep some semblance of control over your life? I just went through over this and had actually a bit more pain related to the fact I needed to return the router to some random warehouse and needed to pay shipping costs. This yes is not friendly. It was easy for them to give it should be easy to drop by the local agent are deposit the modem, but no...oh well. Life has it's realities and i think my forefathers had it quite tougher(no water or electricity ahahha) so i do not complain.

      Regarding the AI...i am no sure this would be a problem at the customer level...but at the jobs level it will be a disaster. A lot of people get a living from call centers. Even the gig economy is slightly supported by call center jobs or mc jobs where your passion is still not giving you a living but you want to make ends meet.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:44PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:44PM (#769770)

      AT&T has never been what I would call "customer friendly." I do prefer to give my money to "customer friendly" businesses, which is why we dropped AT&T like a rock in 1994 and never looked back.

      AT&T sends door to door salesmen to my house like JWs or something, I openly mock their company and tell them to tell their supervisor to never send another sales person to the house again. Seems that they don't take that hint, I might look into my legal options for damages due to harassment.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:28PM (#769665)

    "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.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @06:21PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @06:21PM (#769684)

    Yup, still a shit company with a near monopoly that lets it do whatever the fuck it wants.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:01PM (1 child)

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:01PM (#769703)

      They've paid a lot of money to get that near monopoly. If you don't like like it you should buy your own senators.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:27PM (#769713)

        I tried offering them passage into Heaven but they said they're holding out for the Devil's Christmas Eve sale. Supposedly you can get all your sins for only 1/2 of eternity in Hell.

        I was told not to mention that the Devil is a math nerd who likes bad jokes

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:32PM

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:32PM (#769759) Homepage Journal

      It wanted to buy Time Warner. Otherwise known as the Home of Fake News CNN. I told them NO!!!!

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:13PM (#769705)

    Headline says they've made it "more expensive" to cancel, but that's not really true. It seems there is no additional cost associated with cancellation.

    What they've actually done is made it so that you can no longer buy less than one month's worth of service. Obviously that means there's less options available for a subscriber, but it only implies higher costs if you wanted to make use those options (like, say, signing up for just one week of service).

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:13PM (#769794)

      Would you still argue the same if they changed their block to one year or a decade?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:17PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:17PM (#769801)

    Just try calling them near the end of a billing month now...

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