According to OFB.biz, the folks at AT&T’s have just turned against a (big) part of their (not so vocal) customers in a move of unprecedented aggressiveness.
The reason behind this is due to the perceived lack of 3G coverage on some areas – AT&T has started to move 2G devices to the “weaker” 1900MhZ band, while reserving the 850MhZ band to 3G only boxen. Customers with a non-3G capable phone (like most BlackBerries, Palm OS Treos or the iPhone 2G) will experience severely degraded signal strength in these areas: which means that phone calls will be dropped in areas where quality of service was not an issue before.
Some AT&T technicians have offered a truly outrageous solution: a 200$ credit which would neither offset the higher cost for 3G plans, nor cover equipment replacements:
When I contacted AT&T’s technical support seeking a solution to the problem, the company did offer a $200 one-time credit, a helpful offer, but not nearly enough to offset replacing my family’s two perfectly functional iPhones and additional Nokia handset (equipment totaling about $1,000 in value over the last two years), nor did the company offer to offset the additional fees attached to the new phones (a cumulative total of $30/month). The standard upgrade offered was pursuant to a new two-year contract on all three lines. Over the course of the next two years, AT&T’s offer would cost an additional $920 plus tax to restore the level of service previously available.
As of now, lawyers have not decided on whether this constitutes a “breach of contract”, which would allow customers to terminate their contract immediately and without penalties (another popular example was the recent CDMA SMS price hike). As the risk for the individual is low (and the class of users is huge), I dare to predict that this will change in the near future…
From my personal point of view, this move is outrageous: it targets less vocal customers (people still using a 2G phone are less likely to be in tech communities according to AT&T’s thinking IMHO), and fuxates the service provided to the majority of users to benefit a small minority.
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Image: (c) abc texte / Dr. Doris Maria Kohrs – all rights reserved!
