
AT&T raises most customers' fees by $1.23, adding $800M revenue - aaronbrethorst
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/att-just-made-800-million-by-raising-everyones-fees-by-1point23.html
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azinman2
“This is a standard administrative fee across the wireless industry, which
helps cover costs we incur for items like cell site maintenance and
interconnection between carriers."

That’s literally what the main monthly fee is for. Covers all costs of
providing service.

~~~
jhall1468
This is the way it works now. With hotels in Vegas you often pay more in
resort fee's than the actual hotel price. Cell phones will start raising
prices via the admin fee rather than the monthly bill, airlines do it via the
"fuel surcharge".

The goal is to make the consumer think they are paying less then they are with
the added bonus of making it extremely difficult to compare prices.

~~~
JJMcJ
Rental cars also - especially if you have to buy liability insurance.

Has gone from a waiver for first $500 or $1000, rest was covered, to unlimited
liability to the customer.

~~~
JJMcJ
Finish my thought:

All this to allow a cheap price to be advertised, what you end up paying may
be a lot more.

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awalton
Must be nice being in an industry where you can basically print money by
levying completely arbitrary fees and nobody is willing to stop you (i.e.
because you've already used those fees to pay off politicians in both
political parties in all of the legislatures in the land).

~~~
harryh
Aren't we talking about fees for cell phone service here? It's a robust market
with quite a few major competitors. What does paying off politicians have to
do with anything?

~~~
Retric
Being able to advertise price X while billing price Y after locking someone
into a 2 year contract.

~~~
harryh
Don't virtually all the major carriers routinely run deals where they make it
extremely easy for you to buy out of a competitors contract?

The lock in from these contracts is quite weak.

~~~
ovao
I’m a little troubled that consumers would have an expectation that they may
have to rely on that as a result of arbitrary rate increases. Do the vast
majority of consumers know about those opportunities?

I’m definitely for consumers being wise about what they get themselves into,
but I’m also of the opinion that a reasonable contract would preclude the
addition of arbitrary fees. If I contract you to work for me at $80/hour, for
example, I would not be particularly happy if you turned around and forced me
to pay you $85, or be forced to pay some kind of fine.

~~~
mcny
I'm more troubled by spectrum "auctions" than by anything else. If it were up
to me, I'd dig up the bones of whoever was in charge of this asinine decision
and have them hanged, quartered, and drawn. Then, I would nullify existing
contracts and return all their money.

There has to be a better way than to grant a single company monopoly over the
spectrum slice for a market.

~~~
pas
Yes. Shared network, transparently operated by all the service providers. (See
also: in response to a similar what to do comment -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417243)
)

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BigOlBooty22
I can only imagine the conversation that went into this decision:

Raising revenue is as easy as “1,2,3”. Brilliant! We’ll raise everyone’s fees
by $1.23

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paxy
So, a company can just advertise any low price and add on a bunch of arbitrary
"fees" to pad their numbers? Sounds perfectly sane.

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hedora
Simplest solution: Switch to a much cheaper prepaid plan. If everyone did it,
industry-wide revenue would tank, the stocks would tank, and a cornucopia of
slime bags would be fired.

If you are under contract, contact their legal department about the unexpected
rate increase. When they reply, threaten small claims court / arbitration.

Simply paying a lawyer to call your bluff will mean they lose money on hiking
your rates.

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icedchai
Glad I'm an AT&T shareholder, but sorry I'm an AT&T customer.

~~~
ioquatix
The only real solution here is to go out and buy a bottle of very expensive
Whiskey to drown your sorrows.

~~~
tedmiston
Or enough shares to buy that expensive whiskey off of the ~$2 annual dividend
yield.

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pcurve
"This is a standard administrative fee across the wireless industry, which
helps cover costs we incur for items like cell site maintenance and
interconnection between carriers"

I'd hate to have corporate communication job for telecom, healthcare, finance,
and pharma industry.

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compsciphd
just switch to t-mobile. no taxes / hidden fees added to the advertised
subscription price.

~~~
salmon30salmon
Don't forget though, T-Mobile was one of the first carriers to use zero rating
as a marketing ploy (with Netflix IIRC) which is exactly the kind of shady
practices that net neutrality was supposed to defend against. But everyone
thought T-Mobile was great for being an "un-carrier". Really they are just as
hostile to net neutrality as all the others

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
They don't provide zero-rating for their prepaid accounts so you can remain
"pure".

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camel_gopher
Trickle up

~~~
jacquesm
That's actually clever.

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jtlienwis
This is the result of AT&T's massive debt and the corruption of US
politicians. AT&T is able to bribe the state and local governments to prevent
any broadband competition and has gone far into debt to gobble up competition.

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achille
> The change is estimated to impact about 85 percent of AT&T's 64.5 million
> postpaid phone lines in service, making for about $800 million in additional
> annual revenue.

85% * 64.5 million * $1.23 = 67 million

Where did the other 733 million come from?

Edit: Ah monthly fee; Annual revenue.

~~~
zenbob
$67 million a month * 12 = $804 million. I am assuming it is a monthly
increase.

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softrock
It would be more tolerable if they offered good service. I am moving to a city
with one of the largest universities in the US and the fastest internet AT&T
even offers is 12 Mbit/s down and 0.5 up.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
_up to_ 12Mbps. You won't actually get that.

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everdev
That's $6.5M revenue per $0.01 fee increase.

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jklinger410
Crazy that they would institute this just after it was revealed that many of
their buildings are hosting NSA spy ops.

~~~
zepto
Who paid any attention to that? And how is this going to do anyhjng except
pick a few million pockets successfully?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It was all the rage on Slashdot. You didn't get the memo?

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aerotwelve
The lower prices due to increased competition are on their way, America! Just
wait a little bit longer for the consolidation synergy and those massive
corporate tax cuts to really kick in.

~~~
gnicholas
I just switched from Verizon to Comcast (xfinity mobile). I now pay no monthly
line fee, and just $12 per gig. If I go above 3gb, they charge me $45 for the
month and I get unlimited access (throttled after 20gb). Much lower price, and
same Verizon network.

They used to require you to buy the device from them, but now it’s BYOD also.
And unlike many carriers, they don’t charge setup or device upgrade fees.

It seems that competition is here already.

~~~
rshlo
In Israel you can get unlimited minutes + text + 30GB data for $10 a month. If
you want to include around 200-300 minutes to call out of the country you can
get to $13 dollar. The premium packages cost $30 and include calls + data when
abroad. All that on an LTE network.

~~~
arijun
That's a fairly recent development, though; they recently broke up the cell
phone cartels that were charging outrageous rates in exchange for very poor
service.

~~~
aerotwelve
This is something we desperately need to do here, but I don't much faith we'll
do it anytime soon.

Bell got 50+ years to extract incredible amounts of cash from their customers
(who had, quite literally, nowhere else to go). Then it was broken up and
prices fell dramatically, which sounds close to what happened in Israel?

Unfortunately, we clearly didn't learn anything from this, and we let the
small companies formed from the Bell breakup buy each other up -> consolidate
the industry again -> eliminate most of their competition, and we wonder why
we're getting screwed again.

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dzonga
that's a fuck you fee!! because we can, what you gonna do about it!!

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black6
> After a costly acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T may have found a new source
> of revenue.

Is charging more fees _really_ a new source of revenue? It’s not exactly
rocket surgery...

