Tag at&t sucks

I’ve railed for awhile about how ridiculous Comcast rates are.  I currently pay $120 a month for basic digital tv service and internet which is like legalized financial rape in my opinion.

Cell phone carriers are cut from the same cloth, they overcharge customers to a ridiculous degree adding a fee here, a surcharge there until you wind up paying close to $100 a month for a stupid cell phone. It’s maddening.  ATT evidently can’t stuff enough dollars into their exploding pockets so they are coming up with yet another way to screw customers. 

Instead of using some of the billions of dollars that they have generated from their Iphone monopoly to expand the performance of their wireless network, they decided to take the easy route and gimp their data plan instead.  They are doing away with their unlimited data plan and instead offering two capped plans, one with a 200 meg limit and one with a 2 gig limit.  If you don’t monitor your usage closely you will be dinged very happily with surcharges for extra usage. 

It’s an obvious money grab attempt by ATT as well as a way to lessen future usage on their already poorly performing wireless network.  More and more content, specifically streaming content is available on the internet everyday.  ATT obviously knows that putting in ceiling on data usage will translate into huge dollars down the line as the amount of that bandwidth chewing content continues to increase. 

Now supposedly, ATT is grandfathering in existing ATT customers, saying they will be allowed to maintain their unlimited data plans.  The changes only will apply to new customers.  Yea, let’s see how long that promise holds.

AT&T sucks.

I have a couple gripes.

Apple just released their third version of the Iphone in as many years, the 3Gs.  I find Apple’s Iphone strategy rather annoying.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my Iphone and the 3.0 software update adds to the goodness although there are some more annoyances there as well, but lets just talk hardware for now.

The good news about the 3Gs is the camera has been upgraded and OFFICIALLY supports shooting video.  What angers me about this is the lack of “official” Iphone support for video with the camera on the older models.  The existing camera works just fine for shooting video as evidenced by the jailbroken Iphones that shoot video easily.  However Apple has chosen to not turn it on and instead wants to tie it into new hardware. 

I think it is pretty shitty to force customers (that don’t want to hack their phones) to buy yet another new phone to get a feature that has been available on many lesser phones for YEARS already.  I mean cut me a break.  Yes surely this is all part of the Apple master plan for keeping their bottom line sufficiently plump but it annoys me, a lot.  I don’t want to buy a new phone every year.

Like I mentioned, the 3.0 software update has a lot of nice features like cut and paste, landscape mode typing for more apps and even tethering!  For those that don’t know what tethering is, it means you are able to use your Iphone as a gateway to connect a computer or laptop to the internet.  Again this is a feature that other phones have offered for years.  Hell I could do it on my Treo 650.  However there is one small catch.  The feature is available but AT&T won’t support it in the US!  WTF??  That is total bullshit.  Between our two phones I spend over $130 a month  but because AT&T wants to be stingy with their 3G bandwidth they won’t allow their customers to tether?  This is just another reason it is ridiculous that the Iphone has been enslaved to only one carrier.  There is no competition for them so they can dick with Iphone customers as much as they please. 

Again I love my Iphone, I do not love Apple or AT&T.

Gripe number two.  Companies and government manipulating the current short term economic situation into long term gains.  Example in point here in Collier County, fees.  County government has been crying the blues about getting less money in their coffers because of the huge decrease in property tax revenues.  Of course when their funds were increasing 15-20% every year for a half decade or more they had no complaints and did the best they could to spend every penny, in many cases in a wasteful manner.  Well now that money is tight their answer is to invent new fees.

They want to do all sorts of fun things like require permits and inspections for individuals wanting to install water heaters, require a full code inspection for any house that is on the market before it is sold and the most annoying of all, institute a $75 fee for residents that want to use the county beaches.  This sort of practice infuriates me and this is why.  Governments use the economic downturn as the reason for the need to invent all of these new fees and charges.  The problem arises when economic prosperity returns, property values increase yet all of these fees and charges that were invented to help the short term funding issue are never removed. 

The same shit is happening with local businesses.  As my mom can tell you they are laying off people left and right, cutting salaries, cutting benefits again all in the name of economic hardship.  Once that hardship passes do you think the employees will magically have their salaries and benefits restored to their prior levels?  Of course not, at least not until long after the cash has been rolling back in. 

Instead of the owners of these businesses tightening their belts, maybe buying one less exotic sports car, yacht or private plane they instead hack and slash at the people on the front line.  It’s far easier than making a concerted effort to streamline business practices to maximize efficiency.

It’s a dirty practice that seems to be happening almost everywhere.