Lee Graham's Digital Home

#attfail

So this evening I received this "friendly" text reminder from AT&T

"Your data usage has reached 3GB this month. Using more than 3GB in future billing cycles will result in reduced speeds. You can use Wi-Fi to help avoid reduced speeds. Visit www.att.com/datainfo or call 866-344-7584 for more info."

So I called the 866 number and this lady said that there is nothing she can do and that my speed will pretty much be like dial up.

I've had unlimited wireless via AT&T Wireless since my first iPhone 3G. I've chosen to keep that for both my (now Android) phone as well as my wife's. AND I've choosen to be grandfathered into it, while paying the premium for it every month. 

I understand that there is a legitimate reason for capping some people, but I'm certainly not a part of their top 5% of abusers. Hell... I do NOT tether. I do NOT stream a ton of YouTube. I primarily use my phone for a ton of business/personal email and social apps like Foursquare. And I recognize that AT&T isn't completely cutting off my data, but they are pretty much crippling it. Why not just shoot the wounded dog?

My real beef and the purpose of this rant is HOW the AT&T lady went about this. Sure I wasn't very happy when I called her, but I still was professional. Her telling me there was nothing she can do, after I've been a very loyal customer for a number of year paying the premium for their "Unlimited Data" was BS! 

If this is how AT&T wants to treat their loyal customers, I'm sure I can find somewhere else where my business will be appreciated. To all my friends and colleagues that I've told I haven't had any problems with AT&T, I regretfully take that back.

I highly recommend NOT using AT&T Wireless because their policies and customer service SUCK!

Recently, I've relocated from Winston-Salem to Raleigh, so I'm assuming that may be a contributing factor. I never had this issue with similar data usage in Winston-Salem. W-S was a much smaller market and I'm sure they didn't have as much traffic, still that is NOT a good reason for a company to treat their customer like that.

End of rant... Can anyone suggest a solid wireless carrier with top notch support?

Well I don't think Apple's announcements today were anything groundbreaking, but there were two features I found absolutely impressive:

1. iMovie for the iPhone - Shoot 720p, edit, add images & titles, then export. This will be very handy for news reporters and tech bloggers.
2. iChat for the iPhone - This is freaking amazing, but currently only available on Wi-Fi due to carrier limitations. Way to go AT&T Wireless!

(download)

Click here to download:

iphone-4-yay-kinda-dsihEoAIscjaeaksvHBi.zip (74 KB)

Images via: http://www.macworld.com/article/151730/2010/06/liveupdate.html

AT&T again proves to be less than innovative.

I swapped to AT&T when I wanted to jump into the iPhone craze and at the time they were a much better option than Verizon Wireless in my area. AT&T just announced they are getting rid of the unlimited data option for mobiles. This is a step backwards in my humble opinion. Give people freedom (or unlimited data) and then say, "Ha... just kidding. No unlimited data for you."

I'm not terribly upset by the data limit considering I'm going to be paying $5 less per month for 2 GB of data. Especially since I usually use between 500-1000MB per month.

What really irks me, is that they are charging an additional $20 per month for tether option! This is absurd! Its the same bandwidth no matter how you split it and they want to make me spend an additional $20 per month for it. I would really like to be able to take my iPad or netbook anywhere and be able to connect via the Nexus One or iPhone. This is really a sign of a company who is less than innovative!

Just my $0.02