SubscribeStop the Cap! reader John, who lives in Beaumont, Texas, went shopping for Internet access recently and was sold on broadband from AT&T:
I looked for and did not find any reference to caps, and called the sales department. I was told there were no caps. I signed up and when tech support helped me with the registration, the tech bragged how AT&T had no caps when cable companies (Time Warner) did. The day after I installed, I received the express letter stating there was a cap trial in the Beaumont area. The cap is 80GB for my “Elite” service plan. The overage charge is $1.00 per Gig.
Of course what John, and many other residents in Beaumont may not have realized is that AT&T is continuing to test their Internet Overcharging schemes in Beaumont, Texas and Reno, Nevada. AT&T’s website and marketing materials are generally targeted to a nationwide customer base, and it’s easy to receive marketing materials that don’t disclose you reside in the two unluckiest cities in America to be an AT&T broadband customer.
If John is subject to any long term service commitments, he should have the right to exit his contract and terminate service without any further obligation.
Time after time, customers learning of Internet Overcharging with unwarranted limits and penalties are left angry and upset.
At this point, I am very suspicious of any ISP that says they don’t and will not have caps. I want to see an advertisement endorsing a “Better than par throughput and no caps for life” service for a reasonable cost and easy to follow paperwork to back that up when I subscribe. Okay, pinch me and wake me from my dream/delusion.
What is up with Beaumont, Texas? They seem to have 2 or more options for providers why do they seem to get all the special attention from providers for tests?
…because sharks smell blood! The only way this works without losing a substantial chunk of their customers is for all the “competition” to implement cap “tests” at the same time. Now, you might be saying “How is this not price fixing?” …..well…..good question!
I am from Beaumont. We have TW and ATT and nothing else. I was paying 44.95 for TW rr service. They sent me a bill for usage overage and I dropped the broadband, phone and tv services. I found out the 44.96/month I was paying was for 20GB only. I went to ATT and signed up for the pro service. Two days after the modem arrives I get a letter that they are usage capping also. I called them and dropped them before using it at all. I eventually got a retentions agent to agree to mark my account as “no usgae limited”. I don’t know if it is true but I have not been billed for an overage yet. It may have helped that I was dropping my 2 phone lines and yellow pages ads if they refused. Usage caps will be the end of the internet at least for me.
Interesting. Stew, could you do me a favor and use the Contact form and drop me a line. I’m particularly interested in when this all transpired, what number you called to holler at them about this, and any additional insight into getting to the retention agent, the argument you used, and if you know, whether or not you exceeding their 20GB cap.
What I’d like to contemplate is a user action getting customers down there to call and follow your lead and send the message to AT&T they don’t want Internet Overpricing schemes period. Same holds true in Reno.
I’m glad we have some Beaumont readers here. That and Reno have been very hard to organize.
20GB? Damn, I just went over that in 1 day. I was downloading a favorite TV series of mine in 720p HD. Even though I use more than the average user in a month, 20GB isn’t really much to work in a months time even for a family or average user. And I still have an issue with the data cap. I mean are we having problems with running out of bandwidth or data. Well, which is it ISP’s? I think we all know what the deal is.
whatever dude you’re lucky we at verizon have 5 gb cap and gb overage is about 8 times as much i think its like 25 cent a mb
When I was desperately seeking another ISP rather than Wildblue, with whom I’d been a customer for three years, I found that Alltel didn’t have a cap. I went into their office, grilled the customer service lady (poor thing), and they printed me out a copy of their Terms of Service. I read it completely and no mention of a cap was made anywhere. The staff reassured me that there was no cap and would not be one in spite of the Verizon takeover. My contract, if I were to sign, would be honored for its duration.
True to this day I don’t have a cap. I’ve been monitoring our usage — we’re a family of four with two teenagers — and we use 10-15G a month. There is No. Freaking. Way. I’d sign with Verizon if that 5G cap is still in place when my contract expires.
$60 a month buys a lot of lattes and gas for trips to the library, which has free wifi. And no latency issues or caps.
[...] were filed against AT&T with the Better Business Bureau over dubious marketing practices that sold customers on unlimited broadband, only to dispatch letters to newly signed customers telling them it wasn’t unlimited… [...]