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Matthew Miller & Joel Evans
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Two strikes for AT&T today: no unlimited iPad plan and no notice before renewal

By | June 2, 2010, 1:34pm PDT

Summary: AT&T could be facing some serious backlash for its change to the iPad plans and out of sequence notifications.

One of the nice things about the original offer of wireless with the iPad was the ability to choose between two plans: $14.99 for 250 MB or $29.99 for unlimited. While the plans are about to change and the unlimited option is going away, one thing that AT&T is still planning to offer is notification of when your plan is running low.

The above is something I was counting on and also the reason I was surprised to receive a notification last night that my plan had been auto-renewed. According to the notification, my plan is automatically renewed every 30 days, and I’m authorizing AT&T to charge my credit or debit card for my initial and any subsequent iPad Plan. The only way to avoid the charge is to cancel the service at least one day prior to my next scheduled payment. I somehow missed that in the fine-print, but even that wasn’t the part that got me.

After receiving the “Automatic Data Plan Renewal Notice” at 11:58PM last night (June 1st), today at 1:23PM I received the “AT&T Plan Nearly Out of Data” one (see below).

Shouldn’t I have received the “nearly out of data” one before the auto-renewal one? Especially since it’s telling me that my next auto-renew date is 06-02-2010? It definitely seems like that’s the way things should have worked.

At any rate, I don’t really have an issue with it this time around, but given the canceling of the unlimited plan, there are a number of things that are odd with this whole situation. First, the auto renew notice makes mention of an unlimited plan. Second, I technically have a right to cancel since I should have received the “nearly out of data” notice at least the day before the auto-renew date came along.

This whole experience reminds me of when iJustine unboxed her 300 page iPhone bill–a problem that AT&T rectified soon after.

We’ll see how this whole AT&T offering then not offering unlimited iPad data plans pans out, not to mention that I hope they get the timing of their notifications straightened out. Otherwise, the company is going to have an overflowing customer service line soon.

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Topics

Apple iPad, AT&T Corp., Product Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Marketing, Enterprise Software, Software, Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands and technologies into the mobile and wireless space.

Disclosure

Joel Evans

Joel is a serial entrepreneur with his most recent business, CronkSoftware (cronksoftware.com), focusing on consulting and building games and applications for mobile devices. Joel has consulted for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile division and advises other companies on how to incorporate mobile into their existing brands and products. Joel purchases many of his devices and others are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the supplier. If any devices are provided as “keeper” Joel will clearly disclose this in his reviews.

Biography

Joel Evans

With more than a decade of mobile, Internet and wireless experience, Joel specializes in taking existing brands, technologies and services into the mobile and wireless space. Joel is currently serving as the Managing Director of Cronk Software, Inc., a company he founded to offer full-service, end-to-end mobile strategy, design and development services.

Joel is the former founder and "Chief Geek" of Geek.com, a website praised by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and others as one of world's best sources of information for technology professionals and enthusiasts.

Joel also serves as a technology expert for a number of well-known publications and regularly advises corporations, analysts, journalists and bloggers on what the future of technology will bring. He brings decades of relationships with leading game publishers, online communities and publishers, along with both hardware and software product management and delivery expertise. Joel can be found online as "JoelGeek" and you can follow him on Twitter @JoelGeek.

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RE: Two strikes for AT&T today: no unlimited iPad plan and no notice before renewal
leah613 3rd Jun 2010
@Uralbas I use to have a ton of problems with verizon. So much so that they let me cancel my plan without incident. 1. they always charged some erroneous fee. 2. the number of cell towers in our area stunk (one) and the population around here had exploded. Three you could barely get a good signal anywhere and dropped calls were the norm.

With AT&T we have had very few issues and the ones we did have were remedied in minutes. Also signal strength is very hearty.

Guess it all depends on where you live and who has the most towers.

I can say one thing for sure I much prefer imo AT&Ts customer service is leaps and bounds ahead of verizon. At least 98% of their people are on the same page. At verizon I would get 1o different explanations from 10 different people. I would end up having to go over 3 supervisors heads to get any situation fixed. And this after 6 phone calls. I can imagine they have change too much in the two years I have been gone.
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RE: Two strikes for AT&T today: no unlimited iPad plan and no notice before renewal
karynl11@... 2nd Jun 2010
Every chance they get, AT&T forces you to use your own Wi-Fi anyway. Youtube is downsampled to so poor a resolution that it looks like scrambled porn. This whole thing smacks of fraud, since none of this was disclosed prior to buying a 3-g version of the ipad. I am not sure why I waited for this version!
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RE: Two strikes for AT&T today: no unlimited iPad plan and no notice before renewal
Droid101 2nd Jun 2010
@karynl11@...
Not sure why you bought an iPad at all.
0 Votes
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ATT proves again is not worth any investment
Uralbas Updated - 2nd Jun 2010
Any one who does business with ATT do so at their own risk. Its foolish to even consider it as an alternative. Its got the worst service anywhere in the World.

Try to cancel your service and it will take you around 40min if things work out well. The will greet you with "how can I make you happy today" or something like that, then they will ask you for all your info transfer you, 30 min later they will ask for all of it again.

If you want good service, check out Verizon or TMob, they offer good customer service. Sprint is a far distant 3rd. ATT does NOT understand what customer service is. They only want your money and will do anything to take as much from you as they can.

Those who use 200mb or less of phone service, don't understand what their phone is capable of doing. 15gb a month will be typical in under a year. 200gb a month will be typical in 2 years. ATT is not prepared for this.

Then again if you are using and iAnything you already paid for an overpriced product and I guess you like to pay extra for what costs less, otherwise why give so much of your money away?
0 Votes
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RE: Two strikes for AT&T today: no unlimited iPad plan and no notice before renewal
leah613 3rd Jun 2010
@Uralbas I use to have a ton of problems with verizon. So much so that they let me cancel my plan without incident. 1. they always charged some erroneous fee. 2. the number of cell towers in our area stunk (one) and the population around here had exploded. Three you could barely get a good signal anywhere and dropped calls were the norm.

With AT&T we have had very few issues and the ones we did have were remedied in minutes. Also signal strength is very hearty.

Guess it all depends on where you live and who has the most towers.

I can say one thing for sure I much prefer imo AT&Ts customer service is leaps and bounds ahead of verizon. At least 98% of their people are on the same page. At verizon I would get 1o different explanations from 10 different people. I would end up having to go over 3 supervisors heads to get any situation fixed. And this after 6 phone calls. I can imagine they have change too much in the two years I have been gone.
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Two strikes
lars626 2nd Jun 2010
Here we go again.
How long will it take for the corporate weasel figure out that every time they change 'plans' after they have you locked in they are making customers mad. They hide behind the 'you should have read the fine print' excuse. Mad customer.
Sooner or later one of them will figure out that the best way to keep a customer is to treat them right. Not so hard if you try.
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Rollover Megs?
ZStoner 2nd Jun 2010
Remember those commercials about Rollover minutes? Well, how about Rollover Megabytes for folks who may not use all 250 MB in a month?
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A 250 Mbyte plan with rollover would make too much sense
ssaha 3rd Jun 2010
For a person like me, who regularly uses only about a hundred megs per month on my plan, but during the summer would use quite a lot more (being less often near my laptop), having a plan that rolled over the megs would make it much more attractive - and it would be a hook to keep the customer spending. After all, if you cancel, you lose any remaining minutes.
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RE: Two strikes for AT&T today: no unlimited iPad plan and no notice before renewal
tshirttrade 3rd Jun 2010
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