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Don’t Meet Me in St. Louis — AT&T and Charter’s Internet Overcharging

Phillip Dampier April 18, 2011 AT&T, Broadband Speed, Charter Spectrum, Competition, Data Caps 11 Comments

One of America’s largest midwestern cities is being victimized by not one, but two major Internet Service Providers with Internet Overcharging schemes that will limit broadband use by customers.

Charter Communications, which calls St. Louis home, delivers cable service to much of the city, and has lightly enforced arbitrary usage limits on its cable broadband customers since last November.  AT&T, the major telephone provider, plans to limit its DSL and U-verse customers starting in early May.

“Now we get to choose between Charter’s usage cap or AT&T’s,” says Reginald, a Stop the Cap! reader in St. Louis.  “As usual, AT&T is always the bigger ripoff — this company hasn’t done one consumer-friendly thing in at least a decade.”

Reginald is currently a U-verse customer who fled Charter around the time the cable company went bankrupt.

“Charter was, is, and will always be abysmal in providing good service and accurate bills, and I was not about to pay for their business mistakes,” Reginald writes.  “When U-verse became available I told AT&T I was signing up because they were offering unlimited use plans and Charter was playing games with their usage cap.”

When AT&T’s cap is in place, St. Louis residents will get to choose between the lesser of two evils:

Usage Limits

  • AT&T DSL Customers:  150GB per month
  • AT&T U-verse Customers:  250GB per month
  • Charter Lite/Express: 100GB per month
  • Charter Plus/Max: 250GB per month
  • Charter Ultra 60: 500GB per month

AT&T will deliver three warnings and then a higher bill — $10 for each 50GB of “excess usage.”  Charter sends out occasional warnings, then reserves the right to terminate your service.

“It stinks, and if I had my way I would not do business with any provider who has a usage cap,” Reginald says.  “I would rather pay a few dollars more a month and not have to worry, and I can’t imagine I’ve ever used over 100GB in a month.”

Jess, another St. Louis resident, pulls the plug on AT&T U-verse May 2nd.

“I almost wanted them to charge me an early cancellation fee so I could pound them with their sudden change of terms,” Jess says.  “I am switching back to Charter on May 2nd, the day AT&T starts their crap.  AT&T acted all surprised about why I would possibly ever not do business with them over this issue.”

Jess says she would rather deal with warning letters from Charter than a higher AT&T bill.

“Every penny more AT&T gets from us goes right into their lobbying to screw consumers more, and here are the results for everyone to see,” Jess says.  “If Charter wants to pull their games with me and my family, the next step is to declare war on the politicians who let this stuff happen.”

Bill says AT&T offered him a discount to stay with the company — he is canceling his U-Verse service May 1st.  But he refused, telling AT&T he will not do business with a company that engages in Internet Overcharging.

“I’m not too worried about Charter,” Bill writes Stop the Cap! “If they try and threaten me, I’ll let them cut me off and then we’ll sign up under my wife’s name, and bounce from account to account.”

Your money = Their Money

For all three of our readers, none of whom claim they will exceed the allowance, it’s a matter of principle.

Reginald, Jess, and Bill all feel strongly usage caps and overlimit fees are unjustified, and are more about protecting video packages than “unclogging” providers’ networks.

Bob Zimmermann, an AT&T customer in Richmond Heights, tells the Post-Dispatch he doesn’t like the new limit either. He watches an occasional Internet movie, and sometimes downloads video to his iPad. He doubts he’ll exceed the cap, but he doesn’t want to worry about it.

He is shopping for alternatives.

“I’ll see if I can negotiate a better deal,” he told the newspaper.

Jess wishes him luck finding someone else in St. Louis.  She suggests customers like Zimmermann play AT&T and Charter off each other to get a lower bill, at least temporarily.

“What is most important right now is to tell AT&T you are leaving them because they are abusive, and then sign up with a new customer discount with Charter,” Jess suggests.  “Then if and when Charter cuts you off, go back to AT&T and see if you can get them to waive any fees after the third warning or else you are switching back to Charter.”

Another alternative is to sign up for Charter’s business service, which has no usage cap, but comes at a significantly higher price than residential service.  Their starter package includes unlimited Internet at 16/2Mbps speeds, a domain name, and a business phone line with unlimited long distance and calling features.  It runs a steep $120 a month.

“If Charter didn’t offer a 500GB allowance on their 60Mbps tier, I might consider a business package if I used my connection a lot,” admits Bill.  “Isn’t it ridiculous when someone wants to sell you a super fast package you cannot really use because of usage limits?”

Bill partly blames the state legislature for letting AT&T get abusive with customers.

“AT&T shows up with a lot of cash to dole out in the Missouri legislature and in return they get to abuse customers,” Bill notes.  “You notice Verizon cannot get away with this in the more consumer-protection-friendly northeast.”

Jess says the whole thing is a mess.

“It really shows how the midwest is getting screwed once again — this time for Internet access,” she notes. “There is no Verizon fiber here, and even Google showing up in Kansas City won’t be enough to shame the likes of AT&T.”

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TK
TK
13 years ago

Saint Louis is a perfect example of the anticompetitive power of a duopoly. When there are just two broadband providers, they both do the same sh*t. How many other major cities face this same situation with caps on all the major providers?

Tim
Tim
13 years ago

I cancelled my AT&T Uverse Internet about a week ago, cancelled my Uverse TV about a few months ago and went OTA. The guy on the phone asked why I was cancelling and I told him that I didn’t like the data cap that they were about to impose on me and the change of TOS. I also said I was going to Time Warner who doesn’t have a cap. He seemed disinterested and didn’t bother fighting to keep me as a customer, figures. What made me switch to Time Warner, was a door-to-door TW salesman. I asked him if… Read more »

travis varble
travis varble
13 years ago

This is an unstoppable train, Bandwidth is a limited resource, and is very costly to purchase more. Without caps you would be paying double for your internet so your neighbor could stream movies 24/7. The caps are designed to keep these Bandwidth hogs from slowing your internet down (no bandwidth available, No internet for you). Not to mention the wired systems grow more and more each day, so does the demand for more bandwidth. (no I dont work for charter, (anymore)) There are a few options, St. Louis is a Clear 4g city. Clearwire still offers unlimited on the 4g,… Read more »

Ron Dafoe
Ron Dafoe
13 years ago
Reply to  travis varble

Wrong – wrong and wrong again. RoadRunner has been fairly price stable until just recently for over 10 years. The CAPS are designed to keep people watching CABLE TV when your talking about wired cable internet providers. Can you explain to me why providers costs are going down and they are investing less in their networks than ever before, but placing caps and raising fees? Hint – if 2 – 5% of your users are crashing your network that bad you have more problems than arbitrarily limiting your customers to some number pulled out of a hat. BTW – the… Read more »

Scott
Scott
13 years ago
Reply to  travis varble

This is so very wrong on many levels, obviously as a employee for a wireless provider, it’s easy to see why you perpetuate such mis-information. Bandwidth costs are mere pennies per gigabyte and dropping. Large providers like AT&T have ‘free’ transit across their massive network, where capacity is only dictated by the investments in their infrastructure for fiber, copper, and switches along the routes. Bandwidth is absolutely NOT a limited resource, providers would LOVE to make you think so, that way they can charge you like it’s water, or electricity and reap massive profits when in fact peak capacity on… Read more »

larry
larry
13 years ago

This bandwidth caps is another disgusting money grab by the isp’s . They think that everyone is fleeing from tv services and just streaming video online. If that is the case then why bill me extra if I have the damn tv service already. We never had bandwidth caps before but now all of a sudden we do. Heck I can come close to the caps just by downloading my podcasts each night so I can load up my ipod for work the next day. I’m currently on att uverse after switching from their dsl service which only has a… Read more »

Jerry
Jerry
13 years ago

I’m currently “borrowing” a neighbor’s unsecured Wi-fi to send this. Charter cut off my internet a bit after noon, today. I’m in Michigan, south of Detroit, and Charter has long been our only option other than dial-up. AT&T recently extended fiber to our area and it looks like I’m gonna have to go with them. I hope Charter knows where they can shove their “early termination fee” that I won’t be paying them! When I signed the 2 year contract it was represented to me that I’d be getting what I’d already had (25/3 Unlimited) at a better price. Charter… Read more »

James R Bivins
James R Bivins
12 years ago

Here is 2012 and internet services are support to be getting better and cheaper and it is not because companies are so full of greed.That they are making internet cheaper by dropping the GB’s to drop the price when we sould be getting alot more GB’s for alot cheaper price.Than they lie to new and old customers by getting you sucked in 2 yrs contract and etc.Than you sign up,you find out your screwed keeping these services and/or cancelling because your was lied to

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