AT&T Wireless Wants Me to Pay Them to Remain Their Customer

Here's something in the "I just don't get it" category of life. Two weeks ago my cell phone died. So I thought I would look at getting a new phone. Since my two year contract was up with AT&T Wireless, I went into one of the local stores and got a basic model Samsung phone for me and my wife. I also went ahead and renewed our contract for two years.

Now in the past, when I have renewed my contract, I have received new phones for free. But this time AT&T only wanted to discount the phones by $75.00. So I still had to pay $40.00 out of my pocket with a $30.00 rebate. I hate rebates, but I needed a phone and so we agreed.

Then today, we receive our wireless bill only to find that it's $36.00 more than we expected. When we called customer no service, we were told that we were charged an $18.00 upgrade fee per phone line. I told them I didn't like this fee and I didn't think it was right they were charging me to by a loyal customer. I asked if there was anyone I could talk too about having it removed. I was told, "no, it's one of our standard fees and they aren't removed."

So in other words, if I had continued with things unchanged with AT&T and just kept paying them my monthly service fee with no contract, everything would be fine. But now that I am willing to say "Okay I will be your loyal customer for 2 more years" they want me to pay them $36.00 for the privilege! I say "The H E double hockey sticks with that!"

So here's another thing I just don't get. I told the customer no service representative that if this fee wasn't waived, that I would be changing carriers. She said "I am sorry to hear that, but we just don't waive these fees."

And even though that activation fee will cost me more than this upgrade fee, at this point it's not about the money. It's about the principle. AT&T doesn't want to keep me as a customer over $36.00!

So what is $36.00? Will I can't imagine it's anything to AT&T wireless when they bost on their website that in 2006 they had $37.5 billion in revenue. But to me, that's a dinner out with my family. It's a movie date with my wife with babysitting (yes, we go to discount movie theaters). It's a tank of gas for my car. In other words it's a big deal to me!