said by PaddyReagan:We're so accustomed to being ripped off that our shields should be permanently in place. Examples: $7 per gallon gasoline if you don't have time to fill up the rental car; $10 for a wad of cotton candy at the circus; $5 for 20 cents worth of popcorn at the movies.
But, the cellular companies seem to be masters at finding ways to get past those shields. Example: We bought our son a phone so we could maintain contact during his busy schedule (he's 13.) AT&T was instructed to put every block in place so that only local calls could be made. Two months later a bill for $384 arrived for ring tones and text messages. We showed them the contract with instructions to block and the charge went away.
Two months later, we received a bill for $1,294. This time, our son, during a Boy Scout camping trip, discovered that he could access YouTube and, over a three hour period, used several megs of download. (The one cent per KB seemed so innocent and the total combined access time was less than two hours. How's that for an hourly rate?!!) Again, the charge was removed.
My point here is this: As customers, the cellular providers shouldn't be putting all these snares in the path of quality service. I want my mobile experience to be on a clear field, not a mine field. If the companies you and I own or work for treated clients like AT&T el al, we would quickly be out of business. I don't want to wade through 20 pages of lawyered up fine print before I make a call. If the cellular providers could understand this simple principal, most of the thousands of customer service operators could be removed and the communications world would be a much happier place.
I agree with all that. A 2-page TOS could easily spell out all the possible charges. My cell contract was actually two pages. Of course, I did read the phone's manual, which apparently the idiots on the cruise didn't.
