AT&T Wireless Accused Of Hurricane Price Gouging
As Florida braces for its third major hurricane in about a month, mobile phone carriers are, once again, ready to do whatever it takes to help residents... or, possibly, to rip them off. When the last hurricane hit, both Cingular and Sprint were quick to offer free calling stations to local residents who needed to call family and friends to let them know they were okay. T-Mobile made news by giving away free WiFi. All three seemed like good moves for a state ripped to shreds by hurricanes. However, on the other side, doing little to improve their somewhat dreadful reputation these days, AT&T Wireless is being accused of using the opportunity to do a little price gouging, by jacking up their per-minute and connection fees. The details suggest that it wasn't so much AT&T Wireless, but, rather the failure of AT&T Wireless' network along with those of some roaming partners, such that the calls went over the networks of some third party providers at somewhat ridiculous price levels. AT&T Wireless claims they'll refund the extra cash on the next bill, but it still looks bad that this happened at all.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
