I've run into a little bit of a problem with my wireless service that I thought I'd share with y'all. I signed up with AT&T for a one year contract, with free phone thrown in. All good so far. I added a second phone for my wife, at $79.99 for the phone, and ten bucks a month extra for the service. Come billing time, we find that contrary to what we were told over the phone when we signed up, the second phone requires a two year contract, not a one year contract. OK. So let's just eat our little sh*t sandwich and get on with life. They lied, but the hassle of fixing the problem outweighs the hassle of just dealing with it. Trying to sort out an unrelated billing issue, I'm informed that actually, we're now obligated to a two year contract on *both* phones. Needless to say, there was no mention of this when we talked to them, despite explicitly asking about modifications to the original contract. F*ck that! cancel both contracts, have your damn phones back, and here's a nice idea for where exactly you can put them... "We'd be happy to cancel the contracts, at a fee of $175. Per line. "

Ma Bell, meet Mr Tenacious Bastard, Attorney at Law. I'll update as things develop. In the meantime, I suggest you avoid doing business with mendacious *ssholes. Just a suggestion.

Andrew,

I found the telling of your situation with AT&T Wireless most interesting: thanks.

At this moment in time, I'm suffering through the 2nd year of my own 2-year contract with them, and I'm looking forward with joyful anticipation to the time I can shuck their cross from my shoulders and sign with a better firm.

Please do keep us posted as events unfold.

Go get 'em, Andrew! AssholeT&T deserves it.

I used to have AT&T as my home phone provider; I dropped them like a hot rock years ago when they decided they were going to charge me a monthly fee for NOT calling long distance. Screw them.

There's a chance your discussion with the original sales agent(s) was recorded. See if you can find out and get a copy.

When you hear something like "...this conversation maybe recorded for quality purposes...", it probably was recorded.

We're in the first year of our two-year contract with AT&T Clueless. Aside from a minor foulup about some little thing or other when we signed up -- and the fact the contract they first sent us was in Spanish -- my only complaint is all the Spanish-speaking people who insist on calling me no matter how many times I tell them "no hablo ingles." I'd almost think it wasn't a coincidence.

Still, if their salespeople are capable of screwing up little stuff, it's logical to think they could screw up the big stuff too.

By the way, AT&T Wireless, as I understand, is no longer a part of AT&T proper -- and is in the process of being acquired by Cingular.

Right on Andrew! Damn the man.

Unfortunately all the wireless providers I've dealt with are pretty much the same. Crappy.

Blame it on mergers and acquisitions. Or at least part of it. That and poorly understood infrastructure and lack of funding to intergrate.

A number of wireless providers are made up of acquisitions, mergers and such. Systems are not compatible when they are merged, and when this happens to a billing system(s) it can lead to a mess like that. Throwing money at the problem helps, but you need to retain talented people who _built_ the system and they're often the first to go, post-merger.

I contracted at a (small) telco provider that was the sum result of five M+As in as many months - some VC money spent during the dotcom era.

Seamless look up front, complete gonzo mess in the server room. The best of the IT talent walked away post-merger, and landed better jobs. No one really understood how the systems worked, or how they talked to each other. The best answer was usually "sometimes they don't and we don't know why".

My frind sent me the link, said the post reminded him of me, not sure why, I've had verizon for about 10 years for my cell phone needs. I would throw in this comment, either cancel the credit card you gave them when you signed up for he service or call the credit card company (tape conversation and tell them they are being recorded) and tell them in advance not to approve the charges, tell them you won't pay them if they approve them and that based on the salesman lying any contract written or verbal is void. Let them try to come after you for the fee, in fact each letter you get from them and their colletion agencies just toss em without even opening them, very good therapy... I'll bore you with one more example, AT&T related. I leased and eventually purchased some equipment for a business from lucent/avaya whatever name they wanna hide under. They incorrectly charged a late fee of approx 42 dollars to the account. They promised to remove the fee on several occassions when I called, I finally gave up. I guarantee they have spent more than the 42 dollars on salary of people who have dealt with me and printing of bills and postage. For some reason they never turned it over to a collection agency (Maybe cause they know they aren't entitled to the money?) so for the past year plus I don't even open the monthly bill, I just insert it straight into my shredder.

Re the comments about mergers and acquisitions screwing up their services, I think that cell phone competition offers some sobering lessons about how inefficient capitalism can be at providing goods to the marketplace.

One would think that with so much competition for cell phones, that cell phone companies would have excellent sales and help service staff. Sadly, this is not the case. One problem is that when the economy gets tight, the first thing that companies often cut is their product support staffs. This is easy for them to do and often it does not show up on their bottom line--certainly not immediately and often it simply gets lost in the noise.

The reason is that many companies lose a high percentage of their first-time customers. Something like 40%. But they never know _why_ they lose these people. So if people switch to another service, the company does not know if it is because the other service is cheaper, or because their own help desk puts people on hold for half an hour before providing a wrong answer.

What really surprised me is that my own cell phone provider, Sprint PCS, demonstrates little interest in retaining my business. I assumed that they would have special deals to offer to keep long-time customers that they do not offer to new customers. After all, they know my record, know I pay my bills on time, etc. But when I called about renewing my contract, the guy who answered the phone clearly did not care if I switched to another provider. In fact, I suspected that he was merely a contractor, not an actual employee for the company. His job was merely to sign me up, not to do his hardest to sell me service or ensure that I was satisfied with Sprint.

Dwayne - Oddly enough, before I got my blood up over this issue I was going to point out that this is a classic example of the ways in which capitalism fails. Specifically, there can be very large transients in the level of efficiency and service when there are changes in the playing field, and sometimes the transients can take a long time to settle out. Couple that with the fact that often everyone is responding to the same incentives with a common set of perceptions, which may be inaccurate perceptions, and you sometimes get really dumb behavior. In the long term markets do tend to optimize and ferret out problems, but the long term can be *very* long, depending on the details of the industry. When it comes to the high tech sector, I suspect that the rate of technologically disruptive progress exceeds the settling time for market optimization, which is just one way that MicroSoft keeps people buying inferior software at inflated prices, for example.

Markets are excellent mechanisms, but they have flaws.

If you're a low-volume caller, I highly recommend Virgin Mobile. No plans, no bills, no nothing -- you just prepay and they charge you $.10 per SMS and $.25 per minute for voice calls (for the first 5 minutes per day; $.10 per minute after that). This is nationwide flat rate; no roaming fees or anything. They use Sprint's network, so coverage is excellent.

The ypercompetive wireless services industry and the crappy service you get is an example of a Nash equilibrium outcome. An individual buyer is matched with an individual seller at an agreed price every time. But the sum total of the outcomes may not be optimum, efficient or profitable. Customers hate their wireless providers and wireless providers don't care about their customers(most of them are bleeding out their balance sheets) and round and round. Capitalism and freemarkets do not provide the optimum solution in every case. This is why we need regulation from time to time.

> I think that cell phone competition offers some sobering lessons about how inefficient capitalism can be at providing goods to the marketplace.

> Oddly enough, before I got my blood up over this issue I was going to point out that this is a classic example of the ways in which capitalism fails

While I agree that the current system has flaws and needs improvement, just last week I placed a phone call (1)from my car (2)in the middle of nowhere Missouri, to my brother who was (3)at some undisclosed location in California. For this, I paid (4)no incremental cost.

These are 4 things that were completely impossible less than a decade or two ago. So while the services might need improvement, and individual companies are lagging behind, I must respectfully disagree with Dwayne and Andrew that cell phones are examples of the failure of capitalism. In fact, I'd say the opposite is more accurate. Capitalism and competition has *vastly* improved our communications ability in significantly less than one generation.

-S

Stephen - I don't think cell phones represent a failure of capitalism, but the problems with the service (which seem to be very common) force a caveat on the notion that markets always optimize to provide what the consumer wants. In ten years no doubt things will be quite different, but right now despite competition there is a considerable amount of customer frustration with the service. In due course one or other of the cell providers will figure out that offering a service which is easy and pleasant to use and doesn't involve contracts with huge amounts of shifty legalese is the right way to go, and things will get better. We're not there yet, though.

Also, it's worth noting that the current telecoms marketplace is only possible because the original Bell monopoly got broken up. I generally prefer minimal intervention in the marketplace other than busting up monopolies. My only reason for bringing up the problems of capitalism is that I prefer to have all the pros and cons out in the open.

All of these criticisms of capitalism would seem to ignore the large degree to which this industry remains regulated. I'll blame capitalism when I see it in a more pure form in the telecom industry--until then, one can't call it a controlled experiment.

I seriously doubt that AT&T's reluctance to do right w.r.t. their employees misrepresentation has anything to do with their being regulated. It seems to me they just failed to adequately train their employees, and they are trying to make me take the hit for the error rather than accepting it themselves. With less regulation they would have no more incentive to behave decently. Even in the days when there was far less regulation of commerce than there is today, companies occasionally screwed their customers when they thought they could get away with it.

Even in the days when there was far less regulation of commerce than there is today, companies occasionally screwed their customers when they thought they could get away with it.

But part of the reason they thought they could get away with it could be the vestiges of a culture in which they could, because they had a government-granted monopoly (and the regs still distort the market in ways that makes it hard, or at least hard to realize that it's possible, for consumers to switch). Old corporate cultures die hard.

Remember what Ernestine used to say: "We don't have to care--we're the Phone Company."

Mr. S wrote:
"I must respectfully disagree... that cell phones are examples of the failure of capitalism."

Neither of us said that it was a failure of capitalism. And just because an amazing service or technology exists does not prove that capitalism works.

What surprised me was that my expectation was that in a highly competitive market, with lots of companies offering lots of deals, my company, Sprint, seemed to show little interest in retaining me as a customer. Right now they _have_ retained me, but that's because my contract has expired and I pay month to month and I am presently not interested in signing even a one-year contract (and truth be told, I still have a decent deal for the amount of calling I do with the cell). But the attitude that I got from the sales rep was so completely at odds with what I expected that it was a shock.

Now admittedly I did not do a survey, and I'm only one person, and I was not trying to write an economics textbook. But heck, I always thought that companies would make an extra effort to maintain good customers. After all, I've been able to get sweet deals from my credit card company.

The other things I wrote hold true, however. Because there is a sufficient amount of uncertainty involved in business, and because many companies have no interest in removing that uncertainty (or at least find it too expensive to do so), companies do not do things that common sense would seem to require. For instance, they don't try to find out _why_ they lose customers. And because they don't try to find out why, they will often take actions that can easily _cause_ them to lose customers.

Mr. Simberg wrote:
"I'll blame capitalism when I see it in a more pure form in the telecom industry--until then, one can't call it a controlled experiment."

This is somewhat like the excuse that Stalin is not really proof of the evils of communism because Soviet Russia was not true communism.

Well, Mr. (Dr.?) Day, the difference between my excuse and the (presumably non-) Stalinists is that Stalinism really was communism, and a regulated telecoms market really isn't capitalism. I've described how the telecoms market isn't capitalism. In what way (that doesn't defy basic human nature) was Stalinism not communism?

Mr. Simberg wrote:
"Well, Mr. (Dr.?) Day, the difference between my excuse and the (presumably non-) Stalinists is that Stalinism really was communism, and a regulated telecoms market really isn't capitalism."

It is Dr., but my friends call me Squiggy.

Mr. Simberg also wrote:
"I've described how the telecoms market isn't capitalism. In what way (that doesn't defy basic human nature) was Stalinism not communism?"

Your earlier comment presupposes that there is some kind of cutoff point at which a market is no longer capitalistic. (At least I am assuming that is what you meant. I think we can agree that _all_ markets are regulated to some extent and the key question is how much they are regulated.) But I don't think that's a truism. I would argue that there are different degrees of regulation within a general definition of capitalism. Just because telecom is highly regulated, more than, say, agriculture or commercial aviation (heh, heh), does not mean that it is no longer capitalist. There is still significant competition. In fact, one could argue that there is currently vigorous competition. What surprised me in my admittedly myopic little view of one small section of that market was that the competition was not taking the form that it clearly _could_ take. In other words, there is no regulation preventing Sprint from, say, offering me more cellphone minutes to renew my contract with them rather than defect to another customer, yet they did not do that. And there is no regulation preventing AT&T from not screwing-over Mr. Case on his contract, and yet they are still doing that, and ensuring that he's going to defect at his earliest opportunity.

My comparison of your comment to communist apologists is I think accurate. Communist apologists claim that true communism was never achieved in the Soviet Union (power held by the masses) and therefore it is not "fair" to say that communism "failed" in the Soviet Union. Stalinism, in their view, was a hijacking of the system. But this is malarky. Communism, as practiced, included Stalinism. Capitalism, as practiced in the United States today, includes significant regulation. Maybe more regulation than you like, but that does not make it non-capitalist.