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AT&T Activation Fee for Contract Customers Rising to $45, New $15 Fee for 'Next' Customers
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Don't forget that this highly dependent on where you live, work, and travel.
T-Mobile is one of the best choices in Los Angeles, but nearly useless in South Dakota. The number of places where T-Mobile is a good choice keeps expanding. They're probably faster than any other carrier in rolling out network upgrades.
Over what area? LTE only? What about 4G HSPA+?
Verizon and Sprint are the worst when falling back to 3G - nothing in-between it and LTE.
AT&T has a pretty good 4G network, but can get congested. T-Mobile has very good 4G performance.
The way I would measure the footprint is anything 4G and above - how about you?
This is one of the reasons I don't have an iPhone. I'm grandfathered in on the ATT unlimited data plan for the iPad. I pay $29 a month. I also have an iPod touch. I travel a lot, and Between those two, I don't feel the need for an iPhone. I can txt, call, skype, FaceTime and recieve calls no problem. Screw the big telecom companies.
They got rid of the unlimited data plan for the iPad after 2 months, but I've never let mine lapse. They tried to throttle data plans once....but congress stopped that. At least they're good for something.
Activation fees are total BS. Costs them nothing. What a jip. Glad I don't have to deal with that.
They got rid of the unlimited data plan for the iPad after 2 months, but I've never let mine lapse. They tried to throttle data plans once....but congress stopped that. At least they're good for something.
Activation fees are total BS. Costs them nothing. What a jip. Glad I don't have to deal with that.
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How do you text and call with that setup? Using something like Google Voice?This is one of the reasons I don't have an iPhone. I'm grandfathered in on the ATT unlimited data plan for the iPad. I pay $29 a month. I also have an iPod touch. I travel a lot, and Between those two, I don't feel the need for an iPhone. I can txt, call, skype, FaceTime and recieve calls no problem. Screw the big telecom companies.
They got rid of the unlimited data plan for the iPad after 2 months, but I've never let mine lapse. They tried to throttle data plans once....but congress stopped that. At least they're good for something.
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Yes, with Google voice. It's great. If I miss a call, it goes to my email and Google even transcribes the message. I'm mostly a texter anyway. I rather talk face to face than on a phone. It's not for everyone, But this setup was worked for me the past couple years. I certainly don't miss paying over $100 a month.
Besides iMessage, facebook and Google, there are so many other ways to text. Lots of apps available.
they are supposed to have shared data now and data from music apps is excluded from the usage stats. i'll probably switch next year
My corporate FAN specifies that the activation fees are waived. On the rare occasion that they even show up on the bill, a call to customer service takes care of that. They used to just take my word that my FAN covered it... not it takes 15 minutes of research.
But all of that is beside the point. When AT&T introduced Next, they stated that there was no activation fee. They have continued to highlight that "no activation fee" as a feature when comparing Next to the standard 2-year contract. Now they just have their hand out for a quick $15.
I guess we will soon know whether collusion is real or not in the industry. As soon as VZW or Sprint hike their activation fees, too.
And don't even get me started on the BYOD fee. The only way to paint it is corporate greed - just like the airlines and the $25 checked baggage fees.
Does anyone actually pay this anyway? They've always waived mine. I'm more disappointed in att not allowing the iPhone to be purchased from Apple on a 2 year deal anymore.
Kind of like if you have nothing to hide then there shouldn't be an issue with police dropping by to check your house for a minute or two once in a while, right?
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Every time something like this happens, everyone gets mad and says that they're leaving. Truth is, we all know you're not leaving AT&T. This is like when Netflix restructured their plans/pricing and everyone said they were leaving and the opposite happened. People are too lazy to switch, especially since the alternatives aren't that great, either.
How about you pay a one-time $15 fee to me then? It shouldn't bother you as long as you can come up with the money, right?
I've never threatened to leave. Not AT&T. Not Netflix. Not my cable company (internet). Not DirecTV (television service). But I don't like these money grabs "just because they can". I do voice my displeasure at the guys who do devise these baseless and greedy efforts to separate me from my hard-earned cash.
It's not that I can't afford it, it's more that this is a pointless and greedy cash grab by AT&T "because they can", despite the fact that they said that they wouldn't.
You're not providing me with a service, though.
Except that is an issue because it violates the 4th Amendment.
Pretty much this (I posted this a while back):
garirry said:AT&T is one of the most ****ing greedy companies on the freaking planet. I hate them and I wish they become bankrupt and I wish the US/Canada mobile/cable monopoly just ended already. It makes me so darn angry that any of this is still legal!
That's not really the point behind that scenario.
As for providing with a service, you are saying it's all good if a service provider randomly decides to add on some fee for essentially nothing? How about then you similarly randomly decide to pay slightly less for your service once in a while? Surely that's not even close to a drop in a bucket for the service provider...but somehow I get the feeling they would still care.
Besides some of the reasons mentioned one other VERY important factor is how both systems evolved. In the U.S. We have the Airtime system. In the old days you paid for a call, both making and receiving, meaning you pay even if you got called. This is still the case today. I always thought it strange, as people in the early days where very guarded about giving out their cell numbers, because it would cost you, each time you got called. It delayed the adaption for business use especially, as it was convinient but potentially very expensive.
In Europe of course you only pay for outgoing calls. In some countries the land line you call gets charged for receiving such a cell call. I know calling a cell in Europe especially from a landline is absurdly expensive. At here is no such cost in the U.S.
So in the end it's who pays for the call. In Europe it depends, in the U.S. It's always the cell user.
It's tough to really compare the systems - depends on your usage.
I know when I immigrated from Switzerland more than 25 years ago - land lines where cheap. Not so in Europe.
Now why is broadband internet so much more in the U.S. than in Europe? There you got a real issue.
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Netflix is a useless service. I get way more value out of Amazon Prime. And the included streaming is just an additional benefit to me over the Prime pricing and shipping.
Oh lord. A $10 increase in a once every two years fee. People are really going to cry in their beer over this? Like no other company raises prices. Like taxes never go up? As far as companies B.S. fees go this one is probably the lease obnoxious.
I would put Ticketmonster and Tickets.scum up near the top of the list for their "convenience fee," and the most egregious would probably be Comcast and DirecTV's "lease fee," even though you can't buy a box outright and if you could the buying would be much less expensive than perpetually "leasing."
I would put Ticketmonster and Tickets.scum up near the top of the list for their "convenience fee," and the most egregious would probably be Comcast and DirecTV's "lease fee," even though you can't buy a box outright and if you could the buying would be much less expensive than perpetually "leasing."
100 million customers can't be wrong. This isn't Metro PCS, you pay a premium price for a premium carrier. If you're not happy then switch, more bandwidth for my unlimited, now truly unlimited plan.