I recently switched from Verizon to At&t despite hearing about some of the sketchy nickle-and-dime policies employed by At&t. As it turns out I was still caught by one. My employeer offers a discount (referred to as a FAN by At&t) on my At&t monthly bill. Everything I had read prior to signing up indicated I would get a percentage discount on the entire monthly portion of my bill.
I signed up for a Smartphone plan (450mins, 3GB data) and a Tablet plan (250MB data) on the secondary line. After registering my employee discount I recieved a bill for the Tablet (was surprised I got a seperate bill instead of having it alongside the phone bill). The Tablet bill did not have the monthly employee discount applied. I inquired via the chat service today as to why this was. I was told that the tablet didn't have a qualifying plan ( even though I hadn't read about anything that would exclude it leading up to this). I was given this as a statement from At&t regarding the policy:
FANs are applied at the Account level. Qualified Individual Plans, Primary FamilyTalk and Mobile Share plans are eligible for voice discount. Any line on the Account with a qualified data plan also receives the discount. Additional lines on a Mobile Share Plan do not receive a discount.
When I read "Any line on the Account with a qualified data plan also receives the discount." it sounds to me like an additional line with a data package would qualify. As it turns out that data plan has to be a qualified plan. Where can you find out which plans are qualified online? You can't do so!! You would have to call At&t to determine if your additional lines data plan is a qualified plan per their current policy. Today it has to be at the 5GB level but it isn't published so maybe tomorrow that plan won't qualify either. I begged to be shown where I might have read about needing to have a data plan at a certain rate/size prior to signing my contract but they couldn't come up with anything. Luckily for me I purchased my Tablet on a month-to-month plan so will probably cancel it (more out of principal than for the $4/mo) but if you are considering signing a contract and are expecting an employee discount beware.
Do you agree that this policy is deceptive?