AT&T Adds 15 GB and $10 Per Month to Mobile Share Plans and Doesn’t Allow Customers to Opt-Out of This ‘Bonus’ ⇥ theverge.com

Sean Hollister, the Verge:

AT&T has a gift for wireless subscribers on many of its old Mobile Share Value data plans: it’s giving them an extra 15GB of “bonus” data — and it’s making them pay an extra $10 a month for that “bonus.”

It’s almost like the company is forcing people to move to a more expensive plan, only AT&T figured out a way to make that not technically true. Instead, it’s worded in a way that suggests the company is providing you with a SURPRISE BENEFIT that costs you money! It is quite literally an offer you can’t refuse.

This comes one day — one day — after AT&T settled with the FTC for $60 million dollars over trying to redefine the word “unlimited” to mean “limited”.

Shaw, my ISP, uses this kind of sleazy tactic all the time. My bill goes up every six months or so, and when I call to negotiate a better rate, the plan I’ve been on somehow no longer exists. I then have the option of one plan that’s more expensive but with a slower connection speed, or another plan that’s much more expensive and has unnecessarily fast speeds.

The bill I received just a couple of days ago indicates that they’ll be raising my bill by a few dollars again come January. I’ve just checked their plans and the pattern has continued — my current 100 Mbps plan is no longer available, but I can either have a 50 Mbps plan for $85 per month, or 300 Mbps for $105. The way I use the internet hasn’t changed a lot in the last five years, but I’m now paying nearly $40 per month more than I used to for the same utility.