Well Shucks, AT&T Apoligizes for C&D Threat

I don’t think AT&T likes bad press. The story reported earlier concerning Girogio Galante’s being threatened with a Cease & Desist letter has concluded with an AT&T senior VP contacting Galante and providing a sincere apology.
Here’s what AT&T has officially released:

We are apologizing to our customer. We’re working with him today to address his questions and concerns. This is not the way we want to treat customers. From Facebook to significant customer service channels, AT&T strives to provide our customers with easy ways to have their questions addressed. Because of this incident, we are reviewing our entire process to ensure a situation like this does not happen again.

Giorgio says he’s still leaving AT&T and switching to the Evo 4G on Sprint’s network. Hopefully for him they aren’t the first to jump on the pay-per-byte bandwagon.

ATT CEO Doesn’t Care to Hear Your Opinions

As I informed you yesterday, AT&T is going to change their Data Plans to a pay-per-byte format. Well a dissatisfied AT&T customer, Giorgio Galante, decided to get in touch with AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, via email. No Mr. Stephenson’s email address isn’t public, but if you can’t find it with Google, you probably don’t care much about the data price change anyway. Most would think that an email from an end user to the CEO of a company as large as AT&T would get lost in the clutter, but Mr. Galante did get through and even received a response. One of AT&T’s “executive response team” called and left him a voice mail thanking him for his feedback and then proceeded to inform him that any more attempts to contact the CEO will result in a Cease and Desist letter being sent to him.

Now what did Giorgio say in his email to trigger this response?

Just this:

Thanks for making the switch to a Sprint HTC Evo an even easier decision. I don’t think even Steve Jobs can spin 2GB for $25/month as a good thing for the consumer. I may not use 2GB/month today, but the point of these devices (iPad 3g, iPhone 4G, etc.) is that we’ll be able to do more and your network either can’t handle it, or you’re just trying to squeeze more money out of your customers. The $15/month 200MB plan is just a crappy anchor price that makes the $25 plan look like a better deal than it really is, given that the $30/”unlimited” plan goes away.

Please don’t have one of your $12/hour “Executive Relations” college students call me – I’ve found them to be generally poorly informed (Engadget.com readers know more than they do about AT&T) and they have little authority to do anything sensible.

This is simply a soon-to-be former customer feedback.

Regards,

Giorgio G.

Now that didn’t appear to be particularly nasty or even distasteful. Sarcastic, yeah, distasteful or threatening, definitely not.

In fact, he made some pretty good points. When I called AT&T yesterday to get some info on the story, I had to go through three representatives before I got a hold of anyone who even knew about the change, much less the rules AT&T made for those already contracted. Also, he’s dead on with the $15 a month for 200 MB plan being nothing but an anchor to push customers towards the $25 a month plan.

Now what are the AT&T customers to do? They don’t want or care to hear how their customers feel about the new rate changes. So much so that they will threaten to send C&D orders to anyone who attempts to contact someone at AT&T with the ability to make changes. Lets see how this plays out.

You can check out Giorgio’s full story here:
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

(via Geekosystem)

UPDATE:
Apparently there is more to the story. The email that I posted above was the second email sent to AT&T, below you can read the previous email sent by Giorgio Galante, (or at least what he’s willing to share), below.

I’ve been a customer since the iPhone 3G came out (2 years ago). My current eligibility date for a new phone is sometime in March of 2011. I’d consider sticking around if AT&T bumps up my eligibility date such that I can get an iPhone 4G on its launch day.

In general I’ve not been the happiest AT&T customer (ahem…tethering was promised to be available in early 2009 and finally AT&T is getting around to offering it as an option.) You’re bumping your ETFs to $325 for new contracts as of 6/1. Not only do I spend $80 a month with you on the iPhone, but I also throw another $30/month at you with my iPad 3G.

Android is now becoming a compelling option, and Sprint is rolling out their 4G network. I’ve contacted your customer service department and they’ve stated there’s nothing they can do to change my new phone eligibility date. Fair enough – customer service reps rarely have the authority to make the right business decision.

If you want to keep my $110/month flowing, bump up my eligibility date. Otherwise I will go to Sprint and no longer require any of your services (3G iPad included since the HTC Evo is a hotspot for up to 8 devices.)

Bump up his eligibility date? All of this is over a better price on the iPhone4G? I guess Giorgio doesn’t realize just how much money AT&T loses on iPhone sales.

AT&T Restructures Wireless Data Plans

That’s right folks, the honchos at AT&T have decided that offering Unlimited Data packages are not profitable enough, and have decided to implement pay-per-byte data plans. Gizmodo reported back in March that this sin against geeks was coming, we just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.  Below is a chart showing the classic plans vs. the new, and from the looks of it, anyone who wants to tether their phone or iPad to another device is going to get ripped off, big time.

After speaking with an AT&T representative, we’ve found that the pay-per-byte data plans will  apply only to new contracts. Meaning, if you currently have an unlimited data plan, you’re fine as long as  you keep renewing the contract indefinitely. I guess all the people who thought they would wait to buy an iPad won’t be getting the $30 a month unlimited data plan that was pushed so hard at launch.

The Rep. also stated that they will begin offering the new packages on June 7th. Do you think it coincidence that they change the data plans the same day of Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote? Will we be hearing of a launch date for the iPhone 4G? Perhaps this whole data restructure is AT&T is preparing to cash-in with another influx of iPhone customers playing with every web service they can find an app for.

Although AT&T is the first Wireless provider to switch to this new formula, you can be sure that the others will be following suit shortly.

(edit) We just got a hold of this graphic, thought we’d share: