from the you-might-have-an-account! dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow6430
Lawsuit: AT&T signed customers up for DirecTV Now without their knowledge
AT&T supervisors encouraged sales reps to create fake DirecTV Now accounts to make the online video service seem more successful than it really was, a class-action complaint alleges.
AT&T "promot[ed] and reward[ed] account fraud" such as creating the fake accounts and signing AT&T customers up for DirecTV Now "without the customer knowing," the lawsuit claims.
The new allegations were made Friday in an amended complaint as part of a lawsuit filed against AT&T in April in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit alleges that AT&T lied to investors in order to hide DirecTV Now's failure.
"AT&T misrepresented the true condition of DirecTV Now and hid the associated risks," the amended complaint says. DirecTV Now's inevitable failure was subsequently made clear when subscriber numbers began to drop, the amended complaint says:
The dramatic decline in DirecTV Now subscriber numbers was a materialization of the risks associated, including: improper sales practices, such as the creation of fake accounts, which predictably led subscribers to cancel these accounts, upon realizing they were being billed for a service they did not use; the aggressive use of promotional campaigns to artificially sustain subscriber levels; and selling the product at irrationally low prices that would ultimately need to increase.
Related Stories
AT&T Explores Parting Ways With DirecTV:
Telecom giant considers fate of DirecTV satellite unit as cord-cutting saps subscriber base
AT&T Inc. is exploring parting with its DirecTV unit, people familiar with the matter said, a sharp reversal from Chief Executive Randall Stephenson's strategy to make the $49 billion bet on the satellite provider a key piece of the phone giant's future.
The telecom giant has considered various options, including a spinoff of DirecTV into a separate public company and a combination of DirecTV's assets with Dish Network Corp., its satellite-TV rival, the people said.
AT&T may ultimately decide to keep DirecTV in the fold. Despite the satellite service's struggles, as consumers drop their TV connections, it still contributes a sizable volume of cash flow and customer accounts to its parent.
AT&T acquired DirecTV in 2015 for $49 billion. The company's shrinking satellite business is under a microscope after activist investor Elliott Management Corp. disclosed a $3.2 billion stake in AT&T last week and released a report pushing for strategic changes. Elliott has told investors that AT&T should unload DirecTV, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.
Related: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/09/18/1656205
Like Blockbuster, DirecTV, Dish, etc. are extremely slow to catch onto the whole Netflix/Amazon Prime Ad-Free, pick-what-I-want-to-watch model.
AT&T will slash $3 billion off its capital investments next year
AT&T is planning to spend just $20 billion on capital investment in 2020, down from $23 billion this year. [...] The company is on pace to exceed its 2019 goal as it averaged more than $6 billion per quarter in the first three quarters. But with a forecast of $20 billion across all of 2020, AT&T expects to spend about $5 billion per quarter on capital investments going forward. The company is under pressure from investors to control spending, in part because its TV business is tanking and because of AT&T's giant debt load stemming from the purchases of DirecTV and Time Warner.
[...] AT&T's capital spending will decline next year despite the company's plan to roll 5G mobile service out nationwide. AT&T already got much of the 5G spending out of the way by purchasing spectrum licenses, and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told investors that the company's "strong spectrum position will allow for lower capital intensity" over the next three years.
AT&T has also mostly stopped its fiber-to-the-home broadband construction even though large portions of its 21-state territory still have only copper-based DSL service. Fiber deployment isn't stopping completely, as Stephenson said that "5G requires us to continue deploying fiber." But AT&T customers who can't get modern broadband speeds or reliable wireline service in their homes would welcome more capital investment in their neighborhoods.
Related: AT&T Lays Off Thousands After Nabbing Billions In Tax Breaks And Regulatory Favors
AT&T Will Give Poor People 1.5 Mbps DSL for $10 if US Allows DirecTV Merger
AT&T Employees Took Bribes to Plant Malware on the Company's Network
AT&T Turns On 5G In New York, But It Still Isn't Available To Consumers
Lawsuit: AT&T Signed Customers Up for DirecTV Now Without Their Knowledge
AT&T Considers Getting Rid of DirecTV as TV Business Tanks, WSJ Reports
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 19 2019, @01:31AM (1 child)
The rotting zombie corpse of AT&T corporation still sends out droves of sales minions, and when minions can't sign up people for AT&T "services" with their consent - even dangling $100 - $200 signup incentives (what does THAT tell you?) - then of course the sales-temps are going to commit a little fraud here and there to make that next incentive level.
My favorite "take me off your list" reaction came from an AT&T sales spam caller: "But, this is AT&T!!! How could you want us to not call you again?!?!!?" Yeah, bitch, you work for a tool, didn't you know?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @09:01AM
Telstra also does this.
They also have pushed video streaming services to people on ADSL 1 with sub 2MB speeds.
Assholes.
(Score: 2) by optotronic on Thursday September 19 2019, @01:49AM (5 children)
Strangely reminiscent of the Wells Fargo fiasco. Is this more evidence of the decline of commercial morality or is this just more of the same and I just can't remember earlier instances?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 19 2019, @01:53AM (3 children)
is this just more of the same and I just can't remember earlier instances?
No, nothing has changed since we crawled out of the ooze. It was just easier to cover up in the old days when information channels were more limited.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 19 2019, @02:54AM (1 child)
I often asked my elders if morality has declined. And from all I've heard, no, on the whole, things have improved. It can be very hard to tell, what with the evening news and their relentless focus on sensational crime. But consider that lynchings are now very rare. 100 years ago, there might be 2 or 3 lynchings every week. They were very public affairs, with dozens of people complicit in the murders, only getting away with it because society as a whole condoned the activity. They would even take pictures and print them on postcards. The murderers faces, right there, on dozens of postcards, and no one did a thing to bring them to justice. Today, I am sure being so public and getting away with it would be impossible. The torturers who indulged their sick desires at Abu Ghraib learned that.
I would also like to point to medicine as another area that used to be a lot more dirty from an ethical standpoint, what with all those infamous snake oil treatments. And yet, medicine is still plenty dirty, so that doesn't make for the best argument.
Cameras everywhere make it much harder to get away with all kinds of petty crimes. DNA testing is another big factor. What that has really done is make it impossible to deny and cover up a great deal of crime that used to be more common.
Finally, social safety nets and improved health are factor. It is really amazing the effect that phasing out leaded gasoline has had on crime levels. Lead poisoning makes the victims more prone to violence, and lowers their intelligence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @02:32PM
While I'm glad we've stopped physically lynching people, it's been my observation that the frequency and participation rate of internet character assassinations has been on the rise.
Consider what just happened to Stallman. His life was substantially altered in a negative way by an angry mob because of an accusation that he holds beliefs which there does not seem to be evidence that he holds.
It seems to me to be the same part of the brain, and I'm not sure as a society we're improving it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday September 19 2019, @08:04AM
I crawled out of muck, you insensitive clod!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 19 2019, @02:55AM
Why wouldn't the bosses at AT&T order their minions to commit fraud? There were no consequences for the criminals at Wells Fargo and no-one who really counts will be punished for this either.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday September 19 2019, @01:49AM (2 children)
It's almost like mandatory sales quotas are bullshit rent extraction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:27PM (1 child)
What does this even mean? I don't see how sales quotas at all align with Economic Rent [wikipedia.org].
It'd be just as meaningful to call mandatory sales quotas "communist," "piracy," or "terrorism." I would suggest that words have meanings, and people should use them appropriately.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 19 2019, @07:04PM
No, they don't seem to at first glance.
But they're very much about leveraging established power to increase income without any actual improvements in economic efficiency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:14AM
AT&T needs to up their game. Wells Fargo created millions of fake bank accounts and auto insurance policies.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 19 2019, @12:59PM
It seems like there's a catastrophic loss of trust now that spans all sectors. Maybe we can chalk it up to having better access to information such that we now can know and find out about the dirty tricks and cheats that have always happened. Maybe there's something else going on also. But civilization depends on trust, and without it I don't know how it can continue.
Can DIY, or something like it, be the way? There are people out there experimenting with mesh networks and distributed tech. If we have dirt cheap memory can local caching overcome the pitfalls of lag?
Washington DC delenda est.