We've been trying for months to find a different internet provider, ever since rumors surfaced that At&T was going to be capping usage at some un-named amount in the future. We haven't been able to find any but satellite (capped still), bright house (not any better), and dial up (slow). A few months ago we called At&T to inquire about the cap, what our average usage was, and find out if there was any truth to the rumors. We were told there was no truth to the rumors, they weren't capping, and they had no way of tracking monthly usage.
Now it's the future.
Last month's bill was $47.92 like normal. This month 107!! A $60 jump. When we pulled up the in depth bill online, this is because there is now an "Internet Usage" charge, $10 for every 50 gig over 150gig. No warning, no email, no mailed notice that the policy was changing.
We have 7 people in this household to combine utilities and make things affordable. 2 of those play WOW. My son and I both livestream the Occupations. My daughter watches netflix (we help pay a friend's account to have access to the streaming). My other half watches tv shows and such on Hulu.
If they'd warned us, there are some plans that are only a bit more expensive than what we were paying that covers up to 250 gig which would be better for our family. If they'd warned us I would have been able to make sure everyone was aware of it and trim back usage. But they told us they were NOT implementing the caps, not to worry about it.
When we got the bill tonight, they were already closed. So tomorrow we get to spend time arguing with them about the bill, trying to get the 250 gig version and get it back rated. I intend to tell them I am blogging about this, and that if we are not satisfied I'm going to the news networks, facebook, twitter, etc with it.
According to their website this is not in effect in all areas yet, but if you use AT&T for internet, be warned, it's coming. I'll update tomorrow after we get done arguing with customer service and billing and however high up the chain we need to go.
Fri Dec 23, 2011 at 5:42 PM PT: Update 1 From Caedy: the room mate who was on the phone with them this morning:
we've been having issues with the primary account that they set up for us, that their techies CANNOT seem to undo. I know, I'm the one that has sat on the phone with them for multiple hours and still could not get into the account. To that account is where they are sending the notifications, and they are NOT sticking to the statements in the FAQ by sending paper bills to those that they do not/cannot reach via email.
So, I had to call and deal with it this morning, and getting the $60 usage fee reversed, due to lack of notification, and then I will be calling them and switching to the plan with the 250MB plan. I have been a loyal customer to Bellsouth/At&T for over four years, and yes DirectTV does go with Bellsouth, so I'm kind of stuck in a corner there as well.
So we're supposed to hear back about getting the fee waived by Wednesday, if not I'll be back on hold again. By the way, they knew about this problem with the email account and everything else they need to contact us about they send to FloridaSNMom's email instead of that one.
What's odd is the terms of service that's up states that they started monitoring this in May 2011, but when we called customer Service in the end of April about if the rumors were true, they said no, they weren't going to cap internet service and they had no way of monitoring usage.