from the only-lost-$500-million-per-month...for-60-consecutive-months dept.
After Buying DirecTV For $50 Billion In 2015, AT&T Now Seeks To Sell It For Under $20 Billion:
How do you destroy $30 billion in value in just five years? If you are AT&T, you buy DirecTV in 2015 for $50 billion and five years later you try to sell it - now renamed to AT&TTV - for less than $20 billion, a loss of 60% on the deal.
That, according to the Wall Street Journal is what AT&T hopes to do as it takes "a fresh look its DirecTV business" exploring a deal for a service wounded by cord-cutting. And by fresh look, the journal means sell.
When AT&T announced plans to acquire DirecTV in May 2014, the vision was to control some 26 million TV subscribers. However, the resulting slump in cable and satellite viewership due to the relentless encroachment of streaming services, the value of DirecTV has seen a sharp drop in recent years and the result is yet another catastrophic media deal. And since the pay-TV unit has shed 7 million U.S. video connections over the past two years, a deal could value the business below $20 billion, the WSJ sources said.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday August 29 2020, @12:01PM (34 children)
5 years ago it was clear that skyrocketing cable fees was going to drive cord cutting. So what does AT&T do after buying DirecTV? Raise prices and reduce content.
How these bozos make 8 figure salaries is beyond me.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday August 29 2020, @12:29PM (1 child)
Not what but who you know, that's how.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:57PM
Just make sure your relatives are in the Senate or a senior member of the White House.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 29 2020, @01:46PM (21 children)
Market timing... I effectively "cut" myself off from cable in 1991 due to lack of value relative to price - I went to broadcast TV (hard to beat a monthly fee of 0), and when our first DVD player came with a Netflix subscription offer (1998, I think), we took it and never looked back.
Netflix was always an obvious investment target, but somehow always seemed to be over-valued too.
Hats off to the genius at AT&T who is pulling this trigger, they've already lost $30B, that can't be changed - getting out without losing the final $20B is a great move.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:26PM (17 children)
I'm proud to say I've never paid for cable. Came free with an apartment back in the late 80s, but none since then.
Since digital TV transition, for which I've had to put up outdoor amplified antennas to receive what used to work with indoor "rabbit ears", I get well over 80 channels. I paid no attention to cable TV prices until a few years ago when I expected prices to be maybe $20/month and was stunned to hear $80/month was average. A year ago I found my aunt paying $170 for TV and 1 landline. Unreal. Why do they charge so much? Because they can.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:41PM
I'm a hardcase too - written off by Cable marketing as an unwinnable customer. I paid for cable as part of a shared rental from 1988 to 1990 (didn't really have a choice), since then I've taken cable as part of a bundle that lowered my internet monthly fee for a couple of years, but I've never hooked up the decoder box.
In the early years I had ordinary outdoor antennas, since Netflix I don't even bother with those anymore.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:40PM (15 children)
A year ago I found my aunt paying $170 for TV and 1 landline. Unreal. Why do they charge so much? Because they can.
This is exactly it. There's a core group of (old and slowly dying) customers who will absolutely never give up their cable TV, no matter what. I found the same with my mom; I got her to cancel it to save a bunch of money, because she spends a lot of her time watching stuff on Netflix and other services anyway, and the next time I visited I found out she had re-subscribed because she missed her channels that showed endless re-runs of 60s-70s shows, even though you can easily get that stuff online for free or much cheaper. I tried getting her to use SlingTV, Hulu, etc., but it was no use. And she's not unable to use online services; they're built into her smart TV and she already subscribes to, and watches, Netflix and BritBox. Basically, it's just too inconvenient for her to bother finding things she wants from these rerun channels online (she needs Britbox because they don't show that stuff on American TV, so that's what motivated her to subscribe to that and learn to use it), so she'd rather pay $150/month for cable.
The reason Americans have no savings, huge credit card debt, and are always on the verge of bankruptcy is because they're lazy and entitled. They'd rather risk financial disaster than go without something they don't need, especially if it's something they've had for years or decades (like cable TV). The only way it changes is when a new generation grows up without it or not valuing it, but people who've had it won't ever give it up.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:12PM (11 children)
I get all kinds of 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, re-runs on free broadcast TV!! I could list out the shows- she'd love them! Aim her antenna in my direction.
That last wisecrack aside, some of these oldies but goodies channels are fairly recent, last year even, so you and she might not be aware they're now available.
You have to do a channel re-scan from time to time with digital TV, btw.
(Score: 2) by VacuumTube on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:50PM (10 children)
If you want to watch broadcast TV but you don't get great reception you can install a cheap amplifier. ($15-20) Mount it close to the antenna, not at the back of the TV where it would amplify a lot of path noise.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 29 2020, @10:48PM (9 children)
Yeah, I tried getting my mom to do (get an antenna). She doesn't live in a city, so the reception wasn't good enough to get many channels, and the endless-70s-reruns channel she likes is cable-only.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:21AM (8 children)
I'm about 25-30 miles, in fact, I get several stations from another city that's 60 miles away without re-aiming the antenna- rock solid- no breakups. And that's an older antenna and amplifier (mounted on the antenna).
I highly recommend the integrated antenna and amplifier, outdoor rated of course.
Again, you might be surprised at what's been added in just the past year or two. I get many channels that do older shows, game shows, Ozzy and Harriet, Honeymooners, Father knows best, Dennis the menace, you name it.
Which particular shows does your mom like?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:42PM (7 children)
Last time I was there, she was watching MASH. I think she said something about Bonanza too.
As for the antenna, all that sounds like too much trouble for her. Mounting an antenna outside will be very expensive: she'd have to hire an electrician or something to do it. It's more convenient for her to just pay $150/month to keep things as they are. I know, it sounds crazy, but I suspect this is the logic a lot of people follow.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 30 2020, @06:37PM (6 children)
Oh, I thought YOU were going to help her. :) I would do it if it was my mom. :)
One to look for is "MeTV" https://www.metv.com/schedule/ [metv.com]. You can go to zap2it.com, enter her zip code, navigate to "antenna", click it, and see if MeTV is in her lineup.
Bonanza is on "Retro" right now, and there really is about a dozen more of the moldy oldies stations in my area broadcast.
And she doesn't HAVE to commit either way. She could start using the antenna input and see how she likes the lineup before cutting the cable.
I actually have 3 antennas, and one is in my attic and works extremely well- I get everything that comes in on the fully outdoor antennas.
There are many great amplified antennas that would work well right in the room with the TV. Someone would have to aim them using the signal strength meter in the TV. I've seen them for $20 that work well.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 31 2020, @02:01AM (5 children)
Oh, I thought YOU were going to help her. :) I would do it if it was my mom. :)
I thought I was too, but by the time I got there (I only visit once a month or so, I don't exactly live next door), she had already given up and gone back to her cable TV. And she already had a bunch of other projects for me to do with my limited time there.
Which brings me to another observation/complaint about Americans and how they spend money recklessly: they have to have everything NOW. If that means piling on credit card debt because they don't want to wait a little bit, they're happy to do so.
Thanks for the info about MeTV; I'll check that out.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday August 31 2020, @03:12AM (4 children)
As an American I'm not happy to be stereotyped, but many Americans are very much "gotta have it now". My parents were born in the Great Depression into poor families, so I've always been fairly frugal, depending on overall financial situation of course.
Speaking of credit cards and insane debt you reminded me: some years ago I got a "special invitation" to some kind of investment presentation. It turned out to be very legit, and still not well advertised. It was a company that finances credit card debt. They started off talking about various investments from savings accounts to money markets, futures, stocks, mutual funds, real estate, etc., and showed the average returns. Credit card debt was the highest, and from what I see, still is. I'm also proud to say I don't have a credit card. I've had them in the past but kept them paid off.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 31 2020, @03:14PM (3 children)
Why would you not have a credit card? If you're able to keep them paid off, they're basically free money. Any decent card gets you 1-3% cash back (or rewards, take your pick) on everything you buy, some even give you 4% on certain things. This of course is paid for by the merchants, who jack up their prices to compensate, but that state already exists so you might as well take advantage of it. Plus, using credit cards is much safer and convenient than carrying cash around, and it's also impossible to buy stuff online without some kind of card. Debit cards are entirely dangerous: if anyone gets your numbers, they can buy stuff and drain your bank account; this is impossible with a credit card.
The only downside to credit cards is that you have to pay them off every month or you get socked with big interest payments (and late fees if you're late paying), which is one big way the credit card companies make their money. If you have enough discipline to avoid this, then it's entirely in your favor to have a card that gives good rewards.
I honestly don't know how I'd live without a credit card. I wouldn't even be able to buy anything online safely without one.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:59AM (2 children)
Because I don't want to be a stereotypical American. :-P
Really it's complicated. You make good points. I used to have one. I have a Visa debit to pay for online stuff and guess what- it's attached to its own account with very little $ in the account. I "feed" it when I need to buy something online. In fact a few online transactions got blocked- they do use a 3rd party security company that seems to work well.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 01 2020, @08:34PM (1 child)
Because I don't want to be a stereotypical American. :-P
It's not just Americans who use credit cards.
To not be a stereotypical American, it's really easy: don't carry a balance! Pay it off every month, and never spend so much that you can't pay it all off in a month. However, this seems to be utterly impossible for many Americans for some reason.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:10AM
Thanks, but are you trying to be a good friend? Which is fine. Or are you somehow connected to the credit industry and want to make $? Or, maybe part of the tracking infrastructure and want everyone under the spy tracking microscope? Which is another strong reason I don't want one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @08:05AM
I buy whole series of shows for 30-100 bucks on DVD. Usually 10 seasons at a time. commercial free...
Figure out which shows she watches and buy her those for a birthday/Christmas/whatever.
example https://www.amazon.com/Columbo-Complete-Peter-Falk/dp/B07B64Z7HQ [amazon.com]
10 seasons of columbo 50 bucks (got mine for 34).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @11:49AM (1 child)
"The reason Americans have no savings, huge credit card debt, and are always on the verge of bankruptcy is because they're lazy and entitled."
No, the reason is: you lose money by saving it due to inflation because our money is no longer tied to a standard to keep inflation in check. When there's no incentive to save, you have to use credit to make moderate and large purchases.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:15AM
Recently I was surprised to see "layaway" signs at a major store. Admittedly not always possible, like if you need to buy a new major appliance in a hurry, but it's a good way to buy something now before the price rises faster than most investment interest, which is why and how
the Ponzi schemeour economy works...(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 30 2020, @12:06PM (2 children)
They made end up settling for much less than $20B. That's the initial offer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:41PM (1 child)
They're clearly unable to "turn it around" - best to get what they can while somebody else still thinks they can, otherwise its value will end up being less than the physical assets.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:45PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Saturday August 29 2020, @01:59PM (1 child)
They're running a
$50$20 billion business, of course their salaries are justified!(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:00PM
When you say "running" you mean in the same way the Queen "launches" a ship. Show up at the end and sign your name on the plaque.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:02PM
Same old story: it's all about MBAs and short-term profits.
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:37PM
50 - 20 =30. CEO pay, 30. Voila!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zoward on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:42PM (2 children)
I think CEO's believe that they need to do something dramatic to prove they have some sort of master plan to justify their salaries. So AT&T's CEO says, "yeah, I know - I'll buy into video and reap the synergistic benefits of being a content provider and ISP! (Looks around). Okay, who in the video market is selling?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:04PM (1 child)
Nope.
The CEO shows he's the genius by getting others to come up with different plans and have them thrash it out amongst themselves. The CEO "picks" the winner (after others have solved the problems). There's a definite skill in being able to manage a group of ambitious pricks without becoming an ambitious prick yourself. Try it one day - get into a debate with some people and try to avoid being the one cramming your solution down everyone else's throat.
I'd say that is the main skill.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:25AM
That's some interesting good wisdom there. Only thing I'll comment: the dynamic is (quite) different when you're the boss and have the power and authority to make the decisions, shut people down, fire them, etc. But again, excellent points.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:52PM
I bring this up whenever cable television and streaming services are advertised. To me the absolute killer difference is that with Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, HBO, Amazon Prime, and everything like them the price advertised is exactly what you pay. Maybe some kind of state or federal government fee gets added, but that's it.
For years my wife insisted on paid cable television because she wanted first run access to shows that were not available on the local over-the-air broadcasts. Sporting events, TNT, Sci fi channel, whatever. We bounced back and forth between Comcast and DirecTV, and it was always a nightmare where basically the advertised price and what you actually paid had no connection to each other. I would rather pay $100 per month that was advertised as $100 per month than pay $70 per month when the company advertised it as $42 per month. We cut the cable about five years ago and never looked back, and I won't look at paid television ever again, no matter how good the offer is, unless a company adopts a truth-in-advertising policy. Fat fucking chance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:53PM
What I'd like to know is: why do these guys get huge bonuses when their company makes a profit in the short-term, but when they make a stupid business decision like this which ends in disaster, they don't suffer for it at all? Whichever CEO approved this should have to pay back his bonus for the last 5 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:31PM
Your tax dollars, how else?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 29 2020, @12:32PM (6 children)
For years, AT&T has been late to the game and overpriced. Their DSL service of 15 years ago was crap, barely better than an old 56K modem. And for that, of course you had to have the old land line, at the high price they'd demanded for decades and were still demanding even as people were ditching landlines for cellphone service. AT&T was still cramming fees on landline service for such conveniences as touch tone. Yeah, want the convenience of the faster dialing that touch tone gives you as compared to pulse? That's an extra monthly fee. I rather suspect that at some point, touch tone became cheaper for them too, but they weren't about to change their prices to reflect that, oh no.
I actually have a choice of ISPs, AT&T or Spectrum. For Internet only, Spectrum blows AT&T away. Spectrum is faster and cheaper. Spectrum is no bargain themselves, but AT&T won't even match that. There's also Dish, but they aren't competitive either.
AT&T keeps pushing their bundles. Yeah, Internet for $40, no, $30 per month, if you bundle. To me, that's really just Internet for over $100 per month, because I don't care about their cable TV with all the channels, VoIP phone service, and whatever else is in the package.
I really do not understand why everyone hasn't cut the cord. Can get a lot of the same stuff through an Internet connection. In the end, it's all data. To be sure, video is an awful lot of data, but the system can still handle it, there's no need for a separate system. Seems to me that the telecoms are trying to create and maintain an artificial distinction. Same story with text message. A text takes a fraction of the data of voice, but the pricing has been set up to milk the value of communication no matter the form, rather than reflect the vastly different costs of the different ways of communicating.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:17PM
I have (only) Verizon FIOS and Comcast available. They've both fairly recently offered Internet-only for about $40 / month. Verizon DSL was available, but they've abandoned their copper lines (primarily due to fairly famous union-busting). If you want "wireline" (landline) voice, you get FIOS + interface box that used to come with an 8-hour battery backup. They've recently ditched the battery, but there's still an empty compartment and connector for one.
Weird fact: Verizon's FIOS interface box runs on 48VDC, which for those who don't know, is legacy copper open-circuit (on-hook) voltage, and also used in sound systems to send "phantom" power to microphones and other input interfaces.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:37PM
Their DSL service of 20 years ago was the best game in town - until the cable companies quit resembling a circus clown car and started looking more like a clown juggling act.
I do remember significantly better connectivity, even as a single user, compared with the 56K modem services.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:48PM (2 children)
Seems to me that the telecoms are trying to create and maintain an artificial distinction.
They do this because most people (esp. older ones) don't understand that it's all data, and see them as distinct, so the companies try to milk them using this ignorance.
Same story with text message. A text takes a fraction of the data of voice, but the pricing has been set up to milk the value of communication no matter the form
It used to be this way 10 years ago, but not any more. Any decent service plan these days has unlimited voice and text.
Texting is still crap, though, and you should avoid it: it's a fundamentally unreliable service. There is no guarantee your message will arrive to the recipient, because this was never designed into the system. Sometimes your texts will go around SMS and use data channels, if you and the recipient are both on the same network or using the same texting app that detects this (Verizon's Message+ is like this). But this is why other messaging apps have risen up: they let you send and received text messages, but they have modern features like reliable delivery, read receipts, ability to send files or photos, etc. SMS texting only has those when someone does a hacky workaround. Also, texts are tied to your phone, rather than a central service, so if something happens to your phone, or you upgrade phones, generally your text messaging history vanishes. With a central service like FB Messenger, this doesn't happen: you log in and everything is there, which is also handy for being able to use your PC to use the service in addition to your phone. Seriously, SMS texting is just archaic and obsolete and should be retired.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Sunday August 30 2020, @10:18AM (1 child)
Google Messages has already solved pretty much everything you're complaining about with SMS.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:39PM
I've never even heard of this app. I just looked it up on the play store and all the latest reviews are 1 star; it looks like they broke it somehow.
Anyway, how would this solve anything? It sounds a lot like Apple's texting app: works great if the recipient is also using the same app, but otherwise it just defaults back to SMS. And since around half the country uses iPhones, that means you'll be using SMS with half your contacts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:29PM
"I really do not understand why everyone hasn't cut the cord."
i only have cable and dsl as available internet providers. they both suck in various ways and are overpriced.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by lizardloop on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:42PM (3 children)
I worked for Directv as a software contractor right at the time AT&T bought them. The software on their cable box was interesting to say the least. It was basically a stripped down linux with a bunch of different user space daemons that ran the various services on the box. For instance the front panel LEDs were controlled by a daemon written in C that took in UDP packets for what to display. Then you had a bunch of C++ stuff that ran the local database of program information and a few system functions. On top of all that was the worst pile of Java garbage I've ever seen for doing the UI. The underlying platform wasn't great but it was hardly the worst I'd seen. The whole thing was brought to its knees by just how awfully engineered the UI layer was though. Just displaying a basic screen of information to the user would result in tens if not hundreds of calls to various sub systems. All of which had to be done via different IPC mechanism. All of which had various mutex locks that needed to be opened and closed. In order to keep the thing "responsive" they'd gone with a thread pool model. So you had 20 threads and most things that needed to happen got chucked on to the thread pool. In order to get things to happen in the right order they used hundreds of different mutexes. The thing deadlocked constantly. Reproducing a bug was nigh on impossible because of all the concurrency. The log files it spat out were huge and completely unreadable unless you'd been there for at least six months. The entire six months I was there I think I saw about 10 bugs fixed. One guy on the team spent a whole 3 months just looking at one relatively minor issue and eventually handed the ticket back because he was unable to figure out what was going wrong. Moral on the team was through the floor.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:21PM
Yeah, that thing _never_ locked up and needed to be rebooted, did it? /s
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:45PM
> One guy on the team spent a whole 3 months just looking at one relatively minor issue and eventually
> handed the ticket back because he was unable to figure out what was going wrong.
> Moral on the team was through the floor.
This is like most places I have worked at (university research). Places seem to do well for a couple of years when a few good people work together, but one leaves and one gets promoted. Now you've got a legacy system that works now but nobody maintains and nobody new understands. In a couple of year you are back to the Stone Age.
For those interested in the work (rather than getting the promotion) it's a disaster zone. The guy who got promoted thinks he solved everything but doesn't/can't do the work any more. He's safely on the Purchasing Oversight Committee getting his $300k and all your proposals need to go through him (for addition of his name, if the work is up to his standards obviously).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @07:07PM
My parents got DirecTV after ATT bought them... I scanned the box with nmap, bunch of open ports, UPnP, running a 2.something LTS kernel that was years behind on patches.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:49PM (2 children)
Which is worse? AT&T buying DirecTV in 2015, or the AOL - Time Warner merger in 2000? Both AOL and DirecTV should have had poor growth forcasts at their respective times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:54PM
Microsoft buying anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:12AM
News Corps purchase of MySpace?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by fustakrakich on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:54PM
Sweet!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:36PM
i find it suspicious that they were really stupid enough to think sat tv was going to be a good investment. i could have told them that was a losing proposition and remember thinking "wtf!" when it happened and i'm a starving hacker with no PHB experience. It's probably part of some scam, money laundering, embezzlement etc. operation that regulators and feds are "accidentally" overlooking.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:49PM (1 child)
DirecTV was the last cable service we had before we cut the cord. It was expensive, and they were arrogant. The service itself liked to fritz out on rainy/stormy days when you'd most like to stay inside and watch TV. The interface was painfully slow, like every other cable box I've ever seen.
I laugh now when I see my brother-in-law's cable box. They've added a Netflix "channel" he can turn to to access their content (if you are a subscriber to Netflix, of course); the interface, again, is painfully slow, such that he pays hundreds of dollars per month to crawl through a brain-damaged mimicry of a Roku.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday August 29 2020, @10:00PM
I got rid of DirectTV when my landlord had the roof replaced. The roofers left the satellite dish hanging down on the side of the apartment. I figured I would call to have it reconnected when they were done, but in the meantime I had a ton of stuff saved on the DVR to watch. Or so I thought, at midnight the first day the recording I was watching and everything else I had saved suddenly disappeared, with just an infinite message saying it was downloading. I was really pissed off, to say the least. You couldn't call anyone, it had to be "business hours". I went to my account online and left a message that I wanted to cancel my service. I specifically stated I did not want to talk to anyone on the phone or debate about it. To my complete surprise, within an hour I received an e-mail stating my account was closed! I did of course receive a final bill from them, and after I paid they told me the DVR for which I had been paying a monthly fee was "non-recoverable" and could be recycled. It's still sitting there, someday when I am bored enough I might open it up and see if the hard drive has anything usable on it. I assume it has one.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday August 29 2020, @07:02PM (3 children)
But they saved maybe 10 million by cutting back on service and hiring cheaper people to run it for them. And gained another few million by jacking up the price. Surely none of that contributed to their 30 billion loss?!?
Yet another executive board that is SHOCKED that when they cut open the goose that lays the golden eggs, rather than getting riches beyond all avarice, they got goose guts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @10:22PM (2 children)
No, no, you missed it. They got paid big bucks to strip that carcass for everything they could. now they're hoping some fool will buy the leftovers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:21AM
Mmmmm sloppy seconds.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday August 30 2020, @02:04AM
If so, they failed big. I doubt they stripped enough to cover the 30 billion loss.