gordon@uunet.uu.net (Gordon Burditt) (06/09/90)
The ad in my mail says "A review of your AT&T Long Distance bill indicates that you have the potential to save money by changing to the AT&T SelectSaver Plan". "A routine review of your AT&T account indicates that you are currently being charged standard prices for your out-of-state, direct-dialed AT&T Long Distance calls, and that you make the majority of these calls to area code (717) in Pennsylvania." "To benefit from this new plan you would need to increase your AT&T Long Distance calling to your selected area code by about 10 minutes per month." On the basis of my bills, they decided that I would want to get a special rate to area code 717 (.12/min evening/night/weekend, .20/min day) plus 5% savings on all other out-of-state direct calls, for only $1.90 a month. (There are 3 calling rates based on distance. From 817 (Fort Worth, Texas), I think everything is "medium" except Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The $1.90/month seems to be fixed.) Hmmm, how did they choose this? Well, if they know I have two lines billed on the same bill, since January, 1989 that was one evening-rate 717 25-minute call in December, 1989, and one evening 717 29-minute call in February, 1990. If they don't know about the second line, then they only know about the first call. If they went back much further than November, 1989, they would have seen that night-rate 614 calls dominate the out-of-state bill in 1989. Now, if I had gotten this plan in December, 1989 (on ONE line, and made all the calls on that line), and made 1 10-minute evening-rate call each month in addition to actual use, I would have paid $11.40 in SelectSaver bills to date to save about $4.56 on calls, for a net loss of $6.84. And they are strongly implying that they LOOKED at my bills and decided I could save money. AAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!! If they want me to save money, the same plan applied to area code 214 (Dallas, which is in-state, adjacent, and intra-LATA, because unless you use 10288, Southwestern Bell handles it and bills at a higher rate than AT&T) might work, since I call there a lot more. I wonder if AT&T wants the FCC to know you even CAN dial from 817 to 214 via AT&T. One interesting feature: they say NOTHING about changing my long-distance carrier (my default carrier is null) or having to have it be AT&T. Gordon L. Burditt sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon
mcmahan@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Dave Mc Mahan) (06/10/90)
In a previous article, sneaky!gordon@uunet.uu.net (Gordon Burditt) writes: >The ad in my mail says "A review of your AT&T Long Distance bill >indicates that you have the potential to save money by changing to the >AT&T SelectSaver Plan". >Now, if I had gotten this plan in December, 1989 (on ONE line, and >made all the calls on that line), and made 1 10-minute evening-rate >call each month in addition to actual use, I would have paid $11.40 in >SelectSaver bills to date to save about $4.56 on calls, for a net loss >of $6.84. And they are strongly implying that they LOOKED at my bills >and decided I could save money. AAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!! I too was given the 'opportunity' to save on my long distance calling via an AT&T plan (I believe it was the "Reach Out America" plan). I reviewed my phone bills for the previous six months, and found that based on their plan, I would also come out slightly behind unless I raised the amount of time I spent on long distance minutes/month. I wouldn't have paid much more in absolute dollars, but the percentage increase was about 20%. Plus, it would have induced me to make more LD calls in the future to take advantage of the plan. I feel that it is just a clever marketting ploy on the part of AT&T. I think they arrived at their rate structure by analyzing several hundred thousand billings, selecting those that fall into the range of a couple of hours per month, and then devise a plan where they can drop the effective hourly rate but still make more due to service charges, etc. Plus, they would also have the benefit that the plan would induce subscribers to who otherwise wouldn't have to spend more time on the LD calls to justify the cost of the service. It sounded like a good way to go broke saving money. In the end, I followed Nancy Reagan's advice and just said 'No'. Later in time, I again looked at my bills for the three months following the period I would have started if I had selected the plan. I found that my cost would have been even higher (percentage-wise) because I made less calls than the previous six months which triggered the solicitation. I think I made the right choice. -dave