Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Tex]

re AT&T and the high road

I've had clients who were screwed by AT&T on bills for land-line long distance. Crazy stuff that was obviously billing error or the result of hacking, not possibly explained by any genuine service activity on the part of the client. Upshot? AT&T turned them over to collections, and the collections folks violated the collections laws, then AT&T turned them over to a second collections group after learning the clients were represented by an attorney, causing them to be directly harassed by mail, giving the clients a better claim against AT&T for violating debt collections laws than AT&T probably had for service.

AT&T was worthless. Just worthless. And the service at Cingular was pretty bad when I had questions about international service, so I'm entirely unsurprised to hear AT&T fails to tell folks which plans they need.

AT&T's effort to put itself in the spotlight with the iPhone ensures exposure of flaws in its service. The question is: will AT&T fix its service, offer different service for iPhone customers, or stick its head in the sand and just get famous for bad service? EDGE near the Texas Medical Center in Houston is essentially worthless, incidentally.

Take care,
--Tex.