Northern District Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley is unhappy with a new state law that will strip oversight over AT&T. Presley plans to personally file suit in Hinds County Circuit Court against the law, calling it unconstitutional.

“It violates the state constitution,” Presley said of the bill during an interview with the Daily Journal. “There’s no doubt AT&T is the biggest in the state, and this bill will allow them to raise rates without any oversight at all.”

House Bill 825 strips away rate regulation of Mississippi landline service and removes the oversight powers the PSC formerly had to request financial data and statistics dealing with service outages and consumer complaints. The law also permits AT&T to abandon rural Mississippi landline customers at will.

The bill’s author, Rep. Charles Jim Beckett (R-Bruce), told the newspaper he doubts the truth of Presley’s predictions that AT&T will raise landline rates in Mississippi and eventually abandon unprofitable rural sections of the state.

Unfortunately for Beckett, AT&T has a track record of raising rates on basic phone service about a year after winning deregulation in other midwestern and southern states. Beckett’s optimism about AT&T’s benevolence may be slightly colored by $2,500 in campaign contributions he received from the phone company and his extensive involvement with AT&T’s legislative agenda through participation in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group with direct ties to AT&T:

Presley

It seems that Russell and AT&T picked up the food tab for Rep. Jim Beckett and his wife at the ALEC meeting in at the Westin Kierland Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. from November 30 to December 2, 2011.  AT&T also paid for a few rounds of golf for Rep. Beckett while there.  All said and done, AT&T paid $565.39 to cover expenses for Rep. Beckett and his wife on their three day trip to Scottsdale.

But that’s not all.  AT&T also picked up the tab for $151.70 worth of food and tickets while Rep. Beckett and his wife were at the Spring ALEC meeting in Cincinnati, OH in late April of 2011. AT&T also paid $22.62 for food for Rep. Beckett and his wife while he attended the 2011 Summer ALEC meeting in New Orleans.

The total amount AT&T gave to Rep. Jim Beckett and his wife in 2011 through Randy Russell?  $876.85.  The names of the Becketts appear a total of 36 times in AT&T’s 2011 lobbying report, most of it while the Becketts are at ALEC retreats.

Beckett

Presley has also launched a populist campaign against AT&T, last week telling a fired-up crowd at the Jacinto Festival he will fight AT&T’s bought and paid for law that lets them “raise your rates to whatever they want to.”

Crowds cheered support for Presley as he detailed how AT&T has bought influence with Mississippi state legislators, “just because they pass around money or fly you on jets or buy those big ribeyes.”

Presley has a past history of chasing after utility companies that hire expensive lobbyists and hand out extravagant gifts including golf outings, trips, and even opera tickets to legislators willing to vote their way.

He claims it has gotten so bad, corporate deep-pockets are now shutting out the voices of citizens.

“We have a coin-operated government,” Presley said. “That’s wrong.”

AT&T denied it was billing the DeFazio family. (KCBS)

A Sacramento family that continued to receive bills from AT&T more than a half-year after closing their account got an interesting response when they questioned the charges: AT&T denied they were billing the family at all.

Naomi DeFazio cancelled her service with AT&T in November, but nobody told AT&T’s billing department who continued to faithfully bill her $4.84 a month for long distance service the family stopped using. The family wants the charges stopped, but that proved more difficult than they first imagined when AT&T claimed they were not, in fact, billing her at all.

That was news to DeFazio, who showed a growing pile of AT&T phone bills to a local consumer reporter.

“I think they’re just expecting me to pay it just to get them off my back,” DeFazio told KCBS. “Nobody wants to take responsibility for looking into this.”

KCBS:

AT&T, a communications company, eventually admitted it had a communication problem.

“We inadvertently billed a monthly minimum charge and the taxes and surcharges which should not have applied,” said company spokesman John Britton. “We have corrected it.”

AT&T apologized, wiping out her balance.

“It would have been a lot nicer to have an explanation a lot earlier in this process,” DeFazio said.

If you are getting the runaround from AT&T, call 1-800-791-6661 to reach AT&T’s Office of the President. Those executive level customer service representatives are empowered to get things done for customers that lower level representatives cannot.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCBS San Francisco ATT Bills Customers for Canceled Service 7-9-12.mp4[/flv]

KCBS shows AT&T’s phone bills to viewers that the phone company denied ever existed. It took a consumer reporter to finally get AT&T to stop billing a Sacramento woman for long distance service she canceled more than a half-year ago.  (2 minutes)

ToddTool could have been forced into bankruptcy, taking its 14 employees straight to the unemployment line, had AT&T followed through on its threat to collect a million dollar fraudulent phone bill.

Michael Smith and his 14 employees can now sleep again after AT&T dropped a $1.15 million lawsuit against Smith’s small manufacturing company after the story went viral.

The lawsuit was filed over fraudulent long distance calls placed through Smith’s PBX phone system to the war-torn nation of Somalia over a four day period in 2009.

Smith discovered the fraud after getting long distance bills totaling $891,470 the following month.

More than $260,000 of additional charges were billed by Verizon, Smith’s landline phone company, and Verizon forgave those charges a few months after Smith filed a billing dispute. Verizon noticed the unusual calling activity and temporarily suspended Smith’s international long distance service. The phone hackers then simply used a “dial-around” long distance access code for AT&T to keep the calls going through, resulting in a huge bill from AT&T, which charged $22 a minute for the calls.

Unlike Verizon, AT&T wanted its money and despite multiple attempts to get credit for the fraudulent long distance calls, AT&T refused to relent, filing suit against Smith for the full cost of the fraudulent calls, plus interest.

Smith told a Salem, Mass. newspaper if he paid the bill, it would force his company into bankruptcy and put his 14 employees on the unemployment line.

The company claims in its lawsuit Smith should have known better — securing his PBX system more effectively against international long distance fraud and that under Federal Communications Commission regulations, AT&T is entitled to collect from the owner of the phone line, regardless of who actually made the call.

Smith told The Salem News he’s tried to resolve the matter, even reaching out to the CEO of AT&T, but a secretary at the company called and said that once AT&T refers a case to outside counsel, they are done talking.

AT&T later offered to waive the accumulating interest charges on the unpaid balance (now $197,000 and growing) if Smith paid the company $891,470 for the phone calls to Somalia.

Smith filed a countersuit instead, claiming AT&T is abusing the legal process and violating Massachusetts consumer protection laws. A judge was pushing the case to mediation.

Smith’s interview with the Salem newspaper came at additional risk: AT&T’s lawyers threatened they would take action if he “disparaged” the company’s name in the media.

After the story ran nationwide this morning on the Associated Press wire service, the company suddenly dropped the case.

In a statement sent to the media, AT&T writes it is no longer pursuing its claims against Michael Smith, of Ipswich, “though we are entitled by law to collect the amounts owed.”

History repeats itself. In 1889, it was railroads, steel, iron, and energy. Today it is telecommunications.

My first introduction to the concept of corporate doublespeak — designed to cushion the blow of bad news behind a wall of barely-comprehensible babble came in October 1987 when I heard one Wall Street analyst refer to the great stock market crash that had just befallen the financial district as a “fourth quarter equity retreat.”

Holy euphemism, Batman!

You weren’t fired — you were “made redundant.”  The bankruptcy of Detroit automakers and the layoffs that followed were not as bad as they looked. It was merely “a career-alternative enhancement program.”

And, no, Verizon and AT&T are not engaged in should-be-illegal marketplace collusion on pricing and services. They are just practicing some harmless “price signaling.”

That’s the awe-struck view of management consultant Rags Srinivasan, who just gushes over the marketing “stroke of genius” that threatens to give customers a stroke when they open their monthly bill.

Srinivasan’s piece, worthy of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, turns up instead on GigaOm, where it gets some pretty harsh treatment from tech-lovers who hate the rising prices of wireless service.

Price signaling has always existed between the number one and number two players in any market. Agreeing to not engage in a price war is truly a win-win for the market leaders. Since outright price fixing is illegal, market leaders resorted to signaling to tell the other company their intentions or send a threat about their cost advantages.

But traditionally, it was more like flirting — ambiguous enough that the underlying intentions could be denied. Why are these two not shy about admitting to flirting now? The simple answer is the iPhone.

Not too long ago we worried about running out of talk minutes and paying overage. Service providers offered us tiered plans that offered more minutes for a higher price and unlimited minutes for an even higher price. With the additional revenue flowing directly to their bottom line, these higher priced plans were real cash cows.

For those who have any doubt about the profits from unlimited plans, I’d point out that the costs of a mobile service provider are sunk with zero marginal cost for additional minutes. And texts don’t even consume traffic channels — they piggyback on control channels.

[…] In another genius pricing move, Verizon Wireless is presenting this $100 mobile service plan to customers in a bundle — talk minutes plus data. In the past, around $70 was allocated to talk because consumers valued it more. Now subscribers pay only $40, but they still pay the same $100 total price. This is nothing short of pricing excellence, protecting customer margin while also using strong price signaling to make sure that the next biggest market share leader follows suit.

What Srinivasan calls “business at its best” and “pricing excellence” we call collusion at its most obvious. The GigaOm author says he does not want the government tinkering with this kind of marketplace “signaling,” and it does not appear likely he has much to worry about. AT&T and Verizon executives have grown increasingly brazen (and obvious) with their near-identical pricing and “me-too” plans which leave little to differentiate the two carriers from a pricing perspective. The likely result will be at least 100 million cell phone customers eventually stuck paying for unlimited voice and texting services they neither want or need.

Wireless Wonder Twins Powers Activate: Shape of anti-competitive marketplace for consumers; form of collusion.

True, AT&T charges Cadillac prices but has the customer service image of a used 1995 Kia… but they did have the original exclusive rights to the Apple iPhone and Apple devotees proved they will endure a lot. Verizon Wireless has a better network and has always charged accordingly.

Unfortunately for consumers, the also-rans Sprint and T-Mobile (and the smaller still) depend on AT&T and Verizon for roaming off the city highway and into the countryside, and they are often stuck with devices that are a step down from what the bigger two can offer.

Srinivasan would have a better argument if the wireless marketplace had not become so consolidated. Had AT&T had its way with T-Mobile, America would have just a single national GSM network — AT&T. Verizon does not consider its CDMA competitor much of a bother either, and Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse has to divide his time between fighting with Wall Street over why the company has not already sold out to the highest bidder (and now wants to spend a fortune upgrading its network) and customers who consider Sprint too much of a trade-off in coverage and its dismal “4G” Clearwire WiMAX network too slow for 2012.

Srinivasan is probably too young to understand AT&T and Verizon never invented “price signaling.” A century ago, the railroad robber barons did much the same, leveraging their anti-competitive networks-of-a-different-kind to maximize prices in places that had few alternatives. Where competitors did arrive, they were typically bought out to “maximize savings and eliminate market inefficiencies.” The same was true in the steel and energy sector of the early 20th century.

The result is that consumers were turned upside down to shake out the last loose change from their pockets. Eventually, government stepped in and called it marketplace collusion and passed antitrust laws that began a new era for true competition.

How soon some forget.

Stop the Cap! has suddenly started receiving a larger number of complaints about AT&T’s Internet Overcharging scheme in the past two weeks, indicating to us the company has started cracking down more forcefully on usage cap “violators.”

Those who purchased AT&T U-verse in an effort to avoid usage caps from their local cable company are particularly upset, because the phone company still markets its U-verse service as being ‘bandwidth-limit-free.’

AT&T advertises its U-verse service to this day as bandwidth limit free.

“We don’t limit your bandwidth to a particular amount,” promises AT&T in prominent language on its website. The fine print says something very different — AT&T limits the amount of usage customers get before being exposed to overlimit fees — 150GB for DSL, 250GB for U-verse. It is part of what the company calls wired “data plans.”

AT&T U-verse has a 250GB usage cap hidden in the fine print.

“It’s false advertising,” counters AT&T customer Don Brown. “Anyone who reads their promise of ‘no bandwidth limitations’ is going to assume that means no limits, but when I questioned company representatives about the promise, they pull out every trick in the book.”

Brown says one customer service representative told him ‘bandwidth limits’ refer to broadband speed — AT&T does not throttle its customers. Another said the ad claim meant that customers could keep paying AT&T additional money for as much usage as they want or need. But Brown believes AT&T knows better than that.

“When I signed up for service, I asked the salesperson who took my order if there were limits and they said there were none, period,” Brown says. “Not a word was spoken about 250GB limits or overlimit fees. I’m not buying their excuses — what wired ISP throttles customer speeds?”

In fact, AT&T itself defines “bandwidth” much the same way Brown does (underlining ours):

The term bandwidth can take on many meanings. In the case of AT&T U-verse products and services, the term bandwidth is commonly used when referring to computer networking and measuring Internet usage.

The amount of Internet usage is displayed in upload and download amounts. This would commonly be known as the amount of bandwidth the User used during a particular time.

Brown also has no access to any usage monitor or measurement tool, and AT&T told him he “can relax” because the company would send warnings when it noticed his usage was coming perilously close to the limit. But that makes planning around monthly usage limits difficult, because he has no idea what his usage is from day to day.

A week ago, he received his first warning in an e-mail message from AT&T, which was the first indication he was living under a usage cap.

“They are in a real hurry to collect more money from me but they don’t have their ducks in a row on an accurate meter I can depend on,” Brown says. “Would the local power, water, or gas company get away with that? I don’t think so.”

Brown decided AT&T’s “dishonesty,” as he puts it, made him cancel his service. He does not trust the phone company to accurately measure anything.

“At least I know the cable company is a pocket-picking crook so I can be on guard for their next move,” Brown says. “AT&T is more like the thief in the night that robs you blind while you are upstairs, asleep in bed.”

Chris Savage discovered AT&T’s “stealthy” 150GB usage cap on his DSL account when he received an e-mail warning of his own. He gets one more, after which AT&T will “bill shock” him with overlimit fees.

You have exceeded 150GB this billing period.

[…] The next time you exceed 150GB you’ll be notified, but not billed. However if you go over your data plan in any subsequent billing period, we’ll provide you with an additional 50GB of data for $10. You’ll be charged $10 for every incremental 50GB of usage beyond your plan.

AT&T DSL service has a sneaky 150GB usage cap in the fine print.

AT&T really isn’t interested in hearing questions or concerns about their “data plan,” telling customers at the bottom of the message:

Please do not reply to this email. This address is automated, unattended and cannot help with questions or requests.

Savage never knew AT&T implemented an Internet Overcharging scheme:

“This e-mail seemed to say to me, ‘We changed the rules on you without telling you and now you’ve broken them, so we’ll let you off this time, but consider yourself warned!'”

Savage has already cut cable’s cord and watches his television shows online, exactly what big phone and cable companies do not want their customers doing.

The bottom line is that 150GB is not enough for people like me who work at home, rely on Netflix for any kind of TV/Movies (since I don’t have cable or any other TV), have gamers in the house and run a website. What this means for me is that, once again I will have to cancel Netflix because watching just one movie or show per day would mean I would reach my cap about 2/3 of the way into the month. And that is if nobody else in the house watches anything on it, plays any online games or downloads anything.

In the end, it appears AT&T won and Netflix lost. Savage reports after going over AT&T’s limit two months in a row, he canceled his Netflix account — the only television service he had. AT&T DSL cannot even support one movie a night and one or two streamed cooking shows here and there without pushing the family over the limit AT&T imposes.