Fri 11 Jul 2008
Today I had a message in my email InBox telling me that I had a new bill waiting for me from AT&T.
This particular bill was for my home telephone and DSL service. When I first got DSL, it was $15 a month. My home phone and DSL bill was around $30, and I was happy with that. Over the past couple of years, my bill has slowly crept up in price. The DSL price was an introductory price… A year or so after that went away, they decided to raise the price of DSL again.. So, my bill has been getting more and more expensive.
Today’s bill was for $44.xx. I thought that seemed annoying, so I went to their website to check it out. I noticed that last month’s bill was for $42.xx, and I decided to investigate.
It turns out that the difference was the long distance bill. I use my cell phone to make my calls. I don’t see any reason to do anything else. EXCEPT, in one very special case: When I need to send a fax. I was checking out a prospective tenant last month, and the previous landlord’s needed a fax of the authorization sheet. So, I had to send it to them. I ended up sending 3 different faxes for this. Each one was 1 minute long, and I was billed 12 cents for each minute. 36 cents, right?
WRONG!!!
My long distance bill was $2.34. The extra $1.98 was for fees and taxes. Let’s get one thing straight. I’m all for giving people what they need to survive. I understand infrastructure costs and all that jazz. But, when I spend 3 minutes on the phone at an advertised cost of 12 cents a minute, it annoys me to see a bill of $2.34.
When we look at the bill in more detail, we can quickly see that the majority of the cost is for AT&T’s Carrier Cost Recovery Fee, which is $1.49. Seriously, AT&T? Did my 3 one minute phone calls really cause you to need to recover $1.49 in carrier costs?
Anyway, if you’ve ever had issues with this sort of corporate capitalism, feel free to post below. I feel slightly better now, but I’m still $2.34 poorer for 3 tiny phone calls.
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July 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I agree as my bill has been identical to your’s. this 1.49 a month is nothing, but another gimmick for ATT to scam there customers. I have another 2 months of dish contract and I’m moving everything to cable. I don’t care if it cost more and then see if they collect there 1.49.
October 6th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Just spent a frustrating 10 mintues on the phone with an AT&T supervisor. According to the ATT website, that fee is only applied if you have long distance charges on your bill. I had none but still had a fee. Turns out, the monthly plan counts as a charge! Trouble is, I haven’t found a phone company that doesn’t have these bogus fees (usually with a different name.) Has anyone else?
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
This should become illegal. When a price is advertized (say $40 per month) for a phone, these charges should have been included.
I wonder what the phone companies would say if they CONTRACTED with an independant auditor for $10,000,000 to certify their financial statements and then paid a $1,000,000 cost recovery fee to cover the cost of maintaining the computers at the auditing firm.
AT&T (and I am certain the other phone companies also) explains that this is not going to their profits (it is covering costs). Gee, I wonder why they make more money on the advertized service price (is it pure profit because the costs are covered in fees?
Its funny they need these fees badly, but when I moved to the Chicago area, AT&T forgot to bill me for an entire year. I called them every month to remind them.
If they didn’t have idiots doing their billing, they wouldn’t have to charge extra fees.
Thanks for letting me rant.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I just got the same thing, a one minute call cost 33 cents and then 2.46 in taxes and fees. The carrier cost is up to 1.99.
I’m so pissed right now! I’m glad I’m getting rid of AT&T at the end of the month!
June 16th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
I got tried of the corporate add-on fees.I had time to add up all the fees, my phone bill was 40% junk fees. I just this month turned the land line off for good. I feel sorry for you guys that have DSL and can’t get away from Maw Bell…..Try cable for your internet, and cut them lose…..
September 29th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
It’s frustrating too. They do this to thousands of customers each month…and we pay it. Insane.