AT&T’s history of breaking trust with their customers includes handing over private phone records to the government, promising to deliver services to underserved communities and then skipping town, pledging never to interfere with the free flow of information online while hatching plans with the likes of Cisco, Viacom, RIAA and MPA to build and deploy technology that will spy on user traffic.
Whether you take Pearl Jam's story at its face value or not (and hey, I used to work for AT&T, indirectly, sorta, sorry, long time ago in an alternate universe, and since they bought Cingular I'm stuck with them again til May so, you know, like I'm saying here) it's still a good example of why it's not a good idea to turn the net over to the nabobs, Bunky, is the point. Not a good idea at all. Which is why we've been wearing a Save the Net here in the Empire for a long time.
After Congress gets done screwing this one up we may need a Save the Empire sign.
2 comments:
My friend decided not to wait until her contract was up and asked to be released from her contract. They said it would cost her $75 to cancel. This seemed to be an insult to have to pay a fee for the privilege of discontinuing service so she asked "What if I don't pay?" The Customer Service (read that again for emphasis) told her "We'll ruin your credit." (How's that for customer service?) To which my friend responded "Game on!" She contacted the State Attorney's office and pulled out a copy of her contract. (As an insurance broker, she is quite adept at reading contracts.) She gave AT&T a call and said, "You're going to cancel my contract because it isn't valid." You can imagine they went round and round on that but in the end she was right. Cingular's contract did not contain the phrase "and/or assigns" with regards to transferring the contractual relationship. Her contract was with Cingular not with AT&T and Cingular did not successfully transfer the contract to AT&T within the contract language. Anyway, good guys win.
Woohoo! That's very cool. I wonder if they have that hole plugged yet. Actually that whatzitsname outfit that keeps sending me mail, you know, the one that Ben (or Jerry) is involved with, will buy out my contract if I sign up with them but then I would be indentured to them for two years at only a slightly lower rate. However - I'll have to break out the calculator (no! wait! spreadsheet!) because the time is rapidly approaching when I can save money even if I pay the $75 because I would spend soooo much less on Virgin. Virgin has some holes in its coverage (but only in places like Vermont, so who cares?) and they charge much more per minute, but I use so few minutes I would still save big time. Meantime, if you know anybody I can talk to for 4,000 minutes, give me a call.
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