I have been a customer with AT&T since before they switched from Cingular (10+ years), and in the past few years I have seen nothing but a decrease in the value that I receive from this company-yet my bill continually increases.
Let's start at the beginning. My parents added me to their plan when I turned 16 and I was told that I had to pay them $70 for my phone. I assume that was what my line cost, so I went with it. Fast forward a few years and add some big girl panties, and I'm in college with my own cell line. It went up to $120, but I still got to keep all of my perks like unlimited data, free minutes after 7 and on weekends, etc. After a few years, my phone bill jumped up to $140 for no real reason (okay, maybe inflation?). Same services. Then AT&T drops their unlimited data plan, but I get grandfathered in because I've been with them for so long and so that makes me special.
Fast forward a few more years, add some even bigger big girl panties + 2 kids and a husband. My husband and I decided that it would be cheaper for us to combine our cell phone services into one plan to save a little bit of money. We were told we could add a line for under $10, but we would have to drop my free data and I would have to start paying for data. It's like, "Hey, Cara, thanks for giving us the opportunity to serve another customer! By the way, we are taking away your free data!" (HUH?!) This is where the issues started. We were told our bill would be somewhere around $180 a month for the two lines, but it came out to be much, MUCH higher. Within 6 months of my husband getting a new phone, we had maxed out our 10 GB of data two or three times-each time it came with a hefty penalty. We were recommended to increase our data (ya think!?) where we could, of course, pay more for it! No problem. Our phone bill is now upwards of $300 every month. My husband and I look at each other and say, wait, this is just too much money, where we decide to go into AT&T and identify ways we can reduce our bill....
Introducting, AT&T's new NEXT program! We were told that if we upgraded both of our phones, got on some "special" contract plan, we would pay less for it each month. So both of us upgraded our phones, signed our names on the dotted line and were excited to finally be saving some money! Until the bill arrived! It was no where near what we were quoted, AND, somehow we were maxing our data out, again!! We called, and their recommendation was to, of course, BUY MORE DATA! After chatting with several AT&T techs and finding out that my husband's phone was streaming data all night long (while he was asleep next to me), to which their response was, "it's totally your fault," we decided to shut the data off on our phones and only use the wifi.
The lastest fiasco is the straw that unfortunately broke my already broke back. That phone that I signed for came with an installment payment plan for 20 months. I'm in my 16th month, and have considered upgrading several times. We were warned, however, that when you upgrade a phone, you pretty much double your data usage instantly, because the phone is better, faster, stronger, harder, etc. So I decided to hold off because I do occasionally need to use the data for GPS and entertaining my kid during long visits to an unwified doctor's office. Three nights ago, that phone breathed it's last data-sucking breath, and died on me in the middle of a very important business phone call. When turning it back on, it is forever stuck on the apple logo screen, and it says "debugger: double panic mode" at the top. Updating it in iPhones has proved unsuccessful (error 4005). The phone is now a paperweight and nothing more. So I went into AT&T and was told that I can do nothing with the phone, except pay off my remaining installment balance (almost $200) and upgrade, or charge it through my insurance, to which it would be replaced after I pay a $99 deductible. After discussing the insurance option with a friend, I was warned that I would receive a used iPhone, not necessarily in the same color I had before, and that Asurion, the insurance company, might not cover the damages of the previous phone if it were something like water damage. Upon investigating the company Asurion, I have found a myriad of unsatisfied customers, many of whom have received "fake" iPhones as replacements for theirs. AND, I'm not getting the same phone I'm going to be required to send to them when all of this is said and done. The replacement they are sending me is a different color.
My final thought was, hey, at least my bill will go down, since I don't have to pay for that old phone anymore. After some more investigating, I found out that is not the case at all. AT&T is still going to make me pay off the remaining installments from the old phone. The phone that they will no longer service, or do anything about, I still have to pay for. The phone that they sold me that couldn't make it in a 20 month contract (through no fault of my own) will still be on my phone bill at the end of the month.
How is this fair? How is this remotely legal? If I'm required to pay on the phone for the duration of the contract, then AT&T should have a hand in fixing it.
Needless to say, I'm DONE with this company when I'm done paying for a phone I can no longer use. AT&T has turned into an absolute sham of a company, and I have MANY friends who agree. I'm looking foward to no longer owing this company anything.