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from: Consumers Union

Your World, Delivered. If You Can Figure Out Where We Hid It

January 2, 2008
By Bob Williams

Your World, Delivered.

That is, of course, the current slogan of AT&T. But we think its time for the communications behemoth to modify its catchphrase to better reflect the way it actually operates in the real world. We’re thinking something along the lines of “Your World, Delivered — If You Can Somehow Figure Out Where We Hid It.”

Allow us to explain.

Just over a year ago AT&T grudgingly agreed to a pair of consumer friendly concessions in order to win Federal Communications Commission approval to take over its telecom cousin, BellSouth Corp. One concession called for the merged company to offer existing BellSouth telephone customers no-frills, DSL Internet service for $10 a month. The second concession called for the merged company to also offer a so-called “Naked DSL” service — which would not require an AT&T telephone line, like the $10 deal does — for $19.95 a month.

AT&T went to downright ridiculous lengths to hide $10 DSL offer from consumers when it was required to begin offering it last June, and it has continued to make it next to impossible for consumers to find out about it since then.

The $10 deal is still not mentioned anywhere on AT&T’s Internet service web page. To find out about it, consumers have to somehow divine they need to click on a tiny button labeled “Term Contract Plans Available,” which is buried in the boilerplate language near the bottom of the page.

Wait. It gets worse.

AT&T has said it won’t provide an email address or telephone number for customers to call if they have trouble signing up for the $10 deal — which appears to be quite a few people. Click here to read comments sent in to us from consumers who have attempted to sign up for the service online.

So as you might expect, we were watching closely when the one year deadline for AT&T to begin offering naked DSL for $19.95 came and went on December 31.

Giving credit where credit is due, the $19.95 naked DSL deal does actually appear on the company’s main Internet service web page.

We’re still not sure how easy it will be for consumers who want to order the naked DSL service, however. We tried to sign up several different ways on the web page, but each time we were asked for our existing AT&T home phone number. But wait a minute. Isn’t the whole idea of naked DSL is that we don’t have to have home phone service with AT&T?

Next we called a number listed on the web site for questions about the $19.95 naked DSL service and AT&T’s other high speed Internet offerings. Again, we were asked for our AT&T home phone number. When we told the customer representative we didn’t have home phone service with AT&T she asked for our address. When I gave her my address she said we would have to call a different number.

We called the number she had given us (1-800-379-0033) and the customer representative once again asked for our AT&T home phone number. We told her we didn’t have one, but we were interested in the naked DSL service so we didn’t understand why we needed one. She said we could get naked DSL at “the slowest speed we offer,” but it would cost $31.95 a month since — you guessed it — we don’t have AT&T home phone service.

Huh?

This certainly isn’t what AT&T told the Atlanta Journal Constitution in a recent article on the new naked DSL service titled “Want DSL but don’t want a landline? No problem.”

Nowhere in the article did the company mention that customers without an AT&T landline would actually have to pay $31.95 for its $19.95 naked DSL service. We have looked around everywhere on the web page and haven’t found any mention of it there either.

Given AT&T’s continuing shenanigans with the $10 DSL deal, we are not inclined to give the company any benefit of the doubt this time around. If AT&T’s customer service reps are telling would-be customers asking specifically about the $19.95 naked DSL service that it will actually cost them $31.95, then we are hard pressed to see how the company can claim it is fulfilling its obligation under the BellSouth merger agreement.

The Federal Communications Commission should launch an immediate investigation, and it needs to be more than just asking AT&T if it is meeting the obligation it accepted to offer naked DSL for $19.95 a month. The agency needs to do what we did; contact the customer service reps and try to sign up for the service. If AT&T’s deeds don’t match its promises, then the FCC needs to hit the company with stiff penalties — stiff enough so that AT&T will actually feel compelled to knock off the cute stuff and give consumers what it promised in December 2006 to win approval of its takeover of BellSouth.