It’s hard to believe in the middle of a major recession – cell phone companies want to stick it to consumers with higher fees. First lets start with the wonderful folks at ATT — the providers of iphone service. When the iphone came out both Apple and ATT made a big deal about how you could surf the internet on the phone with no limit with a basic data plan. Consumers saw that as bargain and reason to use the phone for far more than just making calls. Its gave users the freedom to download any number of apps and tailor their use to their needs. Sales soared – giving a huge boost to Apple and ATT.

However, as consumers started suing the I-phone more and more they found a basic deficiency – there are many dropped calls. The problem has become so bad ATT has had to give back money to consumers in a number of cities for lost service. ATT admits an infrastructure that can’t handle the volume of data being transmitted by iphone users  on the ATT system. In other words they over sold the iphone and didn’t build a sufficient network to handle the loads.

Now that we’re all addicts – ATT has come up with a novel way to handle the problem. Instead of spending money to fix the system ASAP – they want to punish us – or profit from us. They want to charge more for the data plan per usage — the more you use, the more you pay. Forget the promised made they rolled out the service. Now it’s screw the consumers who are hostages.

Now speaking of hostage taking let’s not forget Verizon – they’ve had a number of failed smart phone calls and consumers have been dumping their service. Their response to their own short comings is to take hostages by upping the early termination fees to $350. If you don’t like their crappy service – too bad – you have to pay an arm and a leg to get out.

BUT IT’S TIME TO FIGHT BACK.

As for ATT’s maneuver – consumers need to contact Apple and demand they stand with their customers and also DON’T ACCEPT DROPPED CALLS! Every time you get a dropped call or find a dead zone call 611 and register a complaint, make them take note of the bad service and at the end of the month call customer service and demand a huge adjustment. Don’t pay for bad service.

As for Verizon, two senators and the FCC are investigating their enormous kill fees for early termination. Email the FCC over these charges and send Verizon a copy.

This post is tagged