AT&T is Threatening to Terminate iPhone Users for Roaming Too Much
According to AT&T, customers can blame their high rates on this poor unsuspecting couple! Penny and John Alexander are actually using their iPhones outside AT&T coverage areas (gasp!)
AT&T just continues to shoot itself in the foot. A perfect storm seems to be brewing with their iPhone customers who are protesting poor coverage, dropped calls and data throttling. Now a story has just surfaced here about a couple in Dadeville, Alabama who are being ordered by AT&T to switch to another carrier or cancel their account.
Penny and John Alexander, longtime AT&T iPhone customers, received a letter from AT&T in late November stating that because their house did not have direct AT&T coverage their roaming usage was costing the company too much money and impacting the megacorp’s ability to “keep rates affordable for all”. AT&T went on to state that the couples’ roaming access will be terminated on January 4, 2010.
With AT&T profit in the billions of dollars you would think they could just let this little blip in costs ride until they actually got a tower near this couples’ house. But no, AT&T is keeping their eye on the prize and cutting costs and aiming for even higher profits next year, in part bolstered by their iPhone monopoly.
Judging from some of the comments posted about this story this is not an isolated case, not for AT&T and not for some other cell carriers as well. Cell carriers do not take kindly to having to incur extra costs for using other networks.
The takeaway from this is that everyone needs to read and understand the fine print on their cell phone contract. Contracts should be written in plain english and easy for the average consumer to apply to their own specific use. Customers should have the right to a refund if their home turns out to be in a low to no coverage area. Unfortunately the convenience of having an outstanding cell phone like the iPhone is being denigrated by having to deal with these minute by minute and byte by byte counting companies more interested in money than providing service to their customers.
One can only hope that by shining the light of public scrutiny on this situation the mighty goliath AT&T will relent and allow the davids of this country like the Alexanders to keep their iPhones and use them with impunity.
This is an AT&T fail post by The Apps Machine
