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The Telecom Digest for Wed, 24 Mar 2021
Volume 40 : Issue 83 : "text" format

table of contents
She bought an iPhone and returned it. AT&T kept charging her for it
Whistleblower Says AT&T Has Been Ripping Off US Schools For A Decade
AT&T's HBO Max Deal Was Never Free

Message-ID: <20210323031327.1B3A5770@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2021 03:13:27 +0000 (UTC) From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org> Subject: She bought an iPhone and returned it. AT&T kept charging her for it There are tales of customer service that truly boggle the mind. This may well be one of them. By Chris Matyszczyk for Technically Incorrect You don't always know whom you're going to annoy. But if you're going to annoy a customer, it's probably unwise to annoy someone who's won the George Polk Award for legal reporting. https://www.zdnet.com/article/she-bought-an-iphone-and-returned-it-at-t-kept-charging-her-for-it/
Message-ID: <20210323031917.DBC8C770@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2021 03:19:17 +0000 (UTC) From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Whistleblower Says AT&T Has Been Ripping Off US Schools For A Decade from the a-pattern-develops dept By Karl Bode In just the last five years or so AT&T has been: fined $18.6 million for helping rip off programs for the hearing impaired; fined $10.4 million for ripping off a program for low-income families; fined $105 million for helping "crammers" by intentionally making such bogus charges more difficult to see on customer bills; and fined $60 million for lying to customers about the definition of "unlimited" data. This is just a few of AT&T's adventures in regulatory oversight, and in most instances AT&T lawyers are usually able to lower the fines, or eliminate them entirely, after years of litigation. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210318/10560346446/whistleblower-says-att-has-been-ripping-off-us-schools-decade.shtml
Message-ID: <20210323031644.5FCF1770@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2021 03:16:44 +0000 (UTC) From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org> Subject: AT&T's HBO Max Deal Was Never Free By Ernesto Falcon And Katharine Trendacosta When it launched HBO Max, it was discovered that usage of the service would not count against the data caps of AT&T customers, a practice known as "zero-rating." This means that people on limited data plans could watch as much HBO Max content as they wished without incurring overage fees. AT&T just declared that it would stop this practice, citing California's net neutrality law as a reason. No matter what spin the telecom giant offers, this does not mean something "free" was taken away. That deal was never free to begin with. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/atts-hbo-max-deal-was-never-free
********************************************* End of telecom Digest Wed, 24 Mar 2021
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