Well, many of you have seen the angry threads I've posted in the past about AT&T. The are the biggest piece of trash in the world, and I hate being a customer of their company. Despite the fact that I have a basic phone with no long distance or cable, my bill this month was $84. I found a new ISP that is not under the control of AT&T. I disconnected my internet at home on Friday, and I'm not switching to a company called Clearwire. I'am NOT their affiliate, and this is not a sales thread. Anyone who is sick and tired of large ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, or other large companies should cancel. I thought about going with Earthlink, but they don't offer cable internet in my area, and I would have to pay for a phone, and I would have to wait two weeks to get connected. Clearwire offers wireless high speed internet access, and they send you a modem in two business days. The only disadvantage to Clearwire is that they do have a stupid one year contract. However, they don't have to pay AT&T for the internet pipelines. I'll let you guys no more about their services as I being using it.
thanks for the info. I concur, AT&T can be quite evil..but oh man, they really had you bent over!! We only use them b/c they just bought SBC but @ least we'll have unlimited LD, DSL 'Pro' and TV for $105 a month
My first job in the States was working for AT&T (sorry I mean an outsourcing company) - yes I was part of the shit heads that would call your house 5 times a day to sell you local & long distance services even after you told us no and even if your name was on the so-called 'do not not call list'. I lasted two days at that Job and walked out, I risked being thrown out of the States for quitting but I didnt care as I hated throwng the agressive sales pitch - plus their service was a rip off.
clearwire is gaining ground around here - some fast speeds for certain areas of the city and the wireless system uses cell towers so you really have great coverage on a laptop.
I worked at Wells Fargo, and I did a job similar to what you were doing, but it was the customers calling us. I still had to sell them "financial products," but I was faced with a dilemma. How can I help someone by selling them a credit card or mortgage, when I would never purchase these products? I eventually left the job, and I'm glad I did. You should have heard the lady on the phone. She was begging me to stay, even when I was hitting her with information about how AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre made comments about controlling the internet, and how AT&T assisted the NSA in spying on Americans. The lady didn't want to hear it. She wouldn't even look it up in the search engines. It just shows that some people are sheep. They are so dependent on the system that they don't know how to function when they realize the people they work for are corrupt. The second lady I talked to, the one who actually helped me disconnect it, agreed with everything I said. She looked up the information I was talking about in the search engine while we were on the phone. She also agreed about the corruption of the pharmaceutical companies.
Well guys, despite the fact that I called AT&T on July 14, paid my bill, and told them to disconnect my DSL, I just got my bill for August, and their STILL charging me for DSL, even though it is disconnected. I swear to god I HATE big companies. Why in the f*ck are they still doing this?
Hey, we have similar problems here with our sole telecommunications company, Telkom. Yeah, they're the kind of company that generates something obscene like R6 billion (not sure of exact figure but it's something like that) and then has the balls to say that they're laying off hundreds of workers to 'save on expenses' We get itemized billing, showing you a complete list of numbers you dialed, etc and guess what? There were false listings on that bill (lol, apparently we were dialing up our ISP at 4am in the morning, when our PC was actually in for repairs. Riiiiight...), and no amount of arguing with Telkom would solve it, because you can't fight someone that big, esp with Government being their biggest shareholder and buddy. Also, they've sent bills to people who don't have telephones (of any kind), or only have cellphones, plus they've sent bills to dead people (who were dead for 30+ years...). Not only that, the network administrator at a company I jobshadowed at ran into a similar problem as you. No matter how many times he explained to them that he never used the landline for anything (he only used his cellphone) they kept on sending him bills. After the 5th month running he simply ignored them, and even received a letter stating that they had cut him off for unpaid bills XD And let's not get started on the internet services... hellkom is dedicated to the cesspit that is the Telkom ISP. The onyl good thing to come out of the mess that is the telecommunications industry in SA is the amount of Wireless ISP startups, and the fact that such an oppressive environment is producing arguably some of the best ISP-related technicians and network-related guys in the world...
Well, since Clearwire uses a wireless internet, they don't need to go through AT&T in order to use their internet pipe lines. From what I read in Wikipedia, they have no affiliation with AT&T, Verizon, or the other large ISPs. However, there are some disadvantages to Clearwire that must be taken into consideration before you switch with them. First, the wireless modem they send you in the mail belongs to them. It is not yours, and if you break it, you will have to pay $300 to replace it. So when they ship it to you, make sure it is put in a place that is secure. Second, It appears that Clearwire does not support Vonage. In others words, if you have Vonage, you will have to disconnect before you can use Clearwire, because they have their own VOIP service. Other than that, Clearwire is fast. They do have a one year, contract, and you have to pay $50 bucks to get it. Otherwise, it is a 2 year contract. If you decide to terminate the contract, you will have to pay $180. Overall, I'm happy with Clearwire so far. I'm just pissed off because AT&T is billing me for DSL even though I disconnected on July 14. Because Clearwire uses a wireless connection, you don't need to have a landline phone, so I'm about to disconnect my phone, and I can only be contacted over the net. Well, I have a solution to that problem. What I'am going to do next month is totally disconnect my landline phone from AT&T. I don't have a cell phone, I may never buy one. The way I see it, the internet is the ultimate tool for communication. It kind of makes telephones/cell phones obsolete, because I can pay one monthly bill and be able to communicate with people over the net. Anyone here at DP who is paying for long distance, cable tv, and a cell phone you disconnect all of them. Why? First, you will save thousands of dollar per year, which can be invested in your business. Bitorrent allows you to download free movies, music, tv shows, documentaries, and anything else you want. Paying for cable is pointless. The internet allows you to communicate with free tools such as Instant messaing, email, and forums. Basically, I've disconnected all these bills, and I'm saving a ton of money because of it. Screw these big companies. All they do is rip us all off. Its time to start ripping them off....
Perhaps they do what my ISP does: Buys lines from lots of different networks and then uses them simultaneously. Saves them tons of cash as they hardly ever max out a single line (and would thus have to buy more) plus their system has redundancy built in - one ISP's lines go down (as it often, often happens with Telkom, our sole landline telecommunications company) and the traffic using those lines immediately switches to the others
I like AT&T. My friend's husband works for them so I go with her to AT&T wives coffee mornings occasionally.