AT&T continues its quest to make landline service a really bad deal with the introduction of a new bill-padding fee that wireless customers will not have to pay.

AT&T’s $1.99 “Tennessee Regulatory Inspection Fee” appeared on customer bills in March, much to the surprise of customers.

“My regular service is only 22 bucks,” Charles “Buck” Meyer told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “If they add $2 to it, that’s almost a 10 percent increase. I’ve been on the fence about switching off my landline for some months, and this could be the thing that pushes me over the edge.”

AT&T says it is entitled to recoup the money it pays to the Tennessee Regulatory Authority. The $1.99 fee appearing on March bills is a “one-time” fee until AT&T figures out how much it plans to charge customers on an ongoing basis. Most companies subject to TRA fees build them into the monthly cost of the service. AT&T is the only phone company in the state to break the fee out on the bill and collect the money separately.

In 2009, when the company lobbied for widespread deregulation of phone bills in Tennessee, it claimed deregulation would not bring about increased rates.

Meyer does not see it that way. He considers AT&T’s new fee a stealth rate hike.

“Slip a little line item on there that’s just a couple bucks and is a one-time deal,” he told the newspaper. “Then pretty soon it’s on there every month.”

The new fee is permitted because of a 2009 change in Tennessee’s statutes that now allow companies to pass along regulatory fees on customer bills.

Companies like AT&T heavily lobbied for statewide deregulation of telephone bills that year, and spent $180,000 in campaign contributions to lawmakers, their political action committees or party organizations. AT&T hired at least 20 lobbyists to help push deregulation through the Tennessee legislature. Critics of the bill warned its passage would lead to rate increases, something AT&T denied at the time.

AT&T Tennessee president Geoff Morton told the Times Free Press back in 2009, “the company needs to compete with rivals and is not interested in raising rates.”

AT&T refused to say how much it will collect from the new fee, but Morton said the company is now lobbying for another law that would gut the fees AT&T pays to the TRA to oversee the quality of phone service in the state.

“In the previous administration, telecommunications inspection fees increased despite a dramatic decrease in telecommunications services regulated by the commission,” AT&T spokesman Bob Corney told the newspaper. “We are hopeful that legislation will pass this session to reduce the regulatory burden on landline telephone customers in Tennessee.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMC Memphis ATT Mystery Fee 3-21-13.mp4[/flv]

WMC’s “Ask Andy” segment has some non-answers from AT&T about their new $1.99 “regulatory authority inspection fee.” When the Memphis consumer reporter called AT&T, the company said, “no comment.”(1 minute)

Bad clutter.

How would you like it if a banner ad was inserted on the bottom of every web page, on top of content you are trying to read and eating away at your usage allowance?

Customers of CMA Communications can tell you, because their web browsing experience now includes advertising messages injected by the cable company to earn more revenue.

CMA, which operates rural cable systems in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Nevada, provides up to 7/1Mbps service with a usage cap of 250GB they borrowed from Comcast.

Zachary Henkel discovered the rude intrusion last month when he navigated to Apple’s website and discovered an intrusive banner ad for H&R Block.

Tired from the day’s events and travel, I had planned to quickly look up the specifications of a Mac Mini, respond to a few emails and then get some sleep. But as Apple.com rendered in my browser, I realized I was in for a long night. What I saw was something that would make both designers and computer programmers wince with great displeasure. At the bottom of the carefully designed white and grey webpage, appeared a bright neon green banner advertisement proclaiming: “File For Free Online, H&R Block”. I quickly deduced that either Apple had entered in to the worst cross-promotional deal ever, or my computer was infected with some type of malware. Unfortunately, I would soon discover there was a third possibility, something much worse.

[…] It was apparent at this point, that my parent’s ISP, CMA Communications, had started injecting advertisements into websites requested by their customers. I felt dissatisfied to say the least. […] You might not be surprised to know that CMA Communications won’t confirm or deny that they are injecting advertisements into their customer’s web traffic.

Customers of CMA Communications see this when they visit apple.com.

CMA Communications is using JavaScript code injection that overlays third-party advertisements on top of various websites, opening the door to subscriber irritation and some obvious conflicts. In fact, visitors to CMA’s own website could find themselves staring at advertising for CenturyLink, AT&T, or a satellite competitor, unless CMA specifically opts its own website out of the third-party ads.

Amazon.com features an ad with Flo from Progressive Insurance, LinkedIn links to a Verizon 4G phone ad, and Bing’s home page pitches AT&T phones. Henkel wants customers to complain, but the affected websites may be in the best place to stop the ad injections by threatening lawsuits against the cable company.

We do love fiber to the home broadband around here, especially when Verizon responsibly avoids usage caps of any kind, but we’re still surprised they re-tweeted us on their official Verizon Twitter channel. Verizon has received well-deserved compliments for offering fiber upgrades while other phone companies tough it out with DSL or offer half-measures like AT&T’s U-verse. Our biggest complaint is that the rest of VerizonLand doesn’t have a clear path to get the service (and the fact our headquarters are in Rochester, N.Y., the only major city in New York not served by Verizon, so no FiOS for us… ever. Frontier Communications is our local telephone provider, and they have underwhelmed us for years.)

The head man in charge at Cable One of Natchez, Miss. admits the local cable system he runs is old and outdated and needs significant upgrades to improve service.

Cable One General Manager John Hilbert told an audience at a public hearing last week that many of the complaints Cable One’s customers in the area are making are simply not ones the company can fix.

While Hilbert’s candid admission may have refreshed an audience used to getting empty promises from providers, Hilbert has been in charge of the cable system in Natchez for several years and is just now discovering that “a lot of the problems with telephone and Internet service stem from old and outdated infrastructure.”

Cable One is preparing what it calls a $500,000 “reinforcement project” to replace and update wires and other equipment.

City officials listened carefully to Hilbert, because the community has been up in arms about the poor service Cable One has been providing western Mississippi. The city and the cable operator are currently negotiating a franchise renewal agreement.

One former judge complained her Cable One phone service has often failed, sometimes for up to three days. The local electric utility said it has lost thousands of dollars over the last few weeks because Cable One’s Internet service has gone offline.

“When I’m sitting here losing money when I know I shouldn’t be, I have a serious problem with that,” Natchez Electric Manager Ricky Long told the Natchez Democrat.

In 2014, customers are likely to face more challenges when the company switches to an all-digital lineup, requiring customers to get a set-top box for every television in the home.

Costa (West Palm Beach Police)

More subcontractor headaches for Comcast: the company is dealing with negative publicity in Florida over reports that the alleged crack cocaine-smoking girlfriend of a Comcast contractor used his Comcast shirt to barge her way into area homes to rob residents of their jewelry.

Boynton Beach police arrested Heather Costa and charged her with burglary, providing a false name and possession of drug paraphernalia after residents complained the woman was pushing her way into area homes claiming she worked for Comcast and needed to count the number of televisions in the home or check Internet connections. When it comes to drug abuse problems, one can go to drug detox la to get help.

Her efforts were bolstered by her boyfriend’s work shirt which included a Comcast logo. Costa’s boyfriend is a contract employee of the cable operator. Costa used the same excuse Comcast does when it defends itself in the media over the quality of its subcontractors: she didn’t actually work for the cable company, instead claiming to be employed as a third-party vendor performing work for Comcast.

Police might have accepted that, until they found her giving a false name (because she had at least one active arrest warrant on unrelated charges), discovered she had a variety of stolen jewelry in her purse, and a glass tube that was burnt at one end that police believe was used to smoke crack cocaine.

If a telecom company worker arrives unexpectedly on your doorstep, always ask to see ID. Company logos on clothing or paperwork alone do not suffice. If in doubt, keep your door closed and locked and call your provider to verify the person’s status. If you feel unsafe, ask them to leave your property and/or call 911.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WPBF West Palm Beach Heather Costa accused of posing as Comcast employee to burglarize home 4-2-13.flv[/flv]

WPBF in West Palm Beach talked with one of the victims of a fake Comcast worker who fast-talked her way in and allegedly robbed her home of jewelry.  (2 minutes)