Don't like AT&T and gripe about it? Kiss your account, employment, et al, goodbye.

[Deja Q]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070930-att-threatens-to-disconnect-subscribers-who-are-critical-of-the-company.html

AT&T has rolled out new Terms of Service for its DSL service that leave plenty of room for interpretation. From our reading of it, in concert with several others, what we see is a ToS that attempts to give AT&T the right to disconnect its own customers who criticize the company on blogs or in other online settings.

In section 5 of its legal ToS, AT&T stipulates the following:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

Translation: "conduct" that AT&T "believes" "tends to damage" its name, or the name of its partners, can get you booted off the service. Note the use of "tends to damage": the language of the contract does not require any proof of any actual damage.

Article has more.

Oh dear. So if you use AT&T and don't like it, don't tell your friends (one of which may be a mole for AT&T!) or even think of sending them the most polite constructive criticism.

[AndyA]

1. Or, play it safe and give AT&T the boot.

They have lousy customer service, they really don't care at all about their customers.

AT&T is too big for its britches again. It needs to be broken up - again.

And don't forget, AT&T was more than happy to help Bush's illegal spying program get off the ground.

[seabeyond]

2. i had swbell bought by att. i ditched 'em. NOW, cingular bought by att

and i cant get my husband to ditch 'em cause of the coverage. yet every time i see att pop up on my cell phone i get pissed. i hate att and i dont want to be their customer anymore. i bought a business and att was charging us for 26 lines every month when only 8 were operable. they were stealing money. i refused to pay them then, and dropped them. the first month they took over swbell they screwed up our bill and overcharged.

come and get me att

[PassingFair]

3. Hello? HypnoToad? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now? n/t

[JTFrog]

4. Good thing there are some

kick ass offers in my neighborhood right now and I'm changing service this week. I have AT&T at the moment. My phone went out on Friday and I went to my neighbors and called to report it out. They told me that since they were so busy that they couldn't send anyone out until October 11th. My dad is in the hospital, I've got 4 procedures myself to get done before the 15th and I'm trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to coordinate anything. I don't have nor can I afford a cell phone. So I told her that she needs to find one of the people who is out there spying on her fellow Americans and pull them off their illegal job and get there ass over here to fix it before it becomes a medical legal issue for them. They showed up the next morning, but that doesn't change my mind. I shouldn't have had to explain my damn family issues or wait two weeks in order to have someone come and take two minutes to find out that the last installation tech spliced my line when installing a new order.

I don't care if they cut my service off (well until the switchover is complete I do /sigh). There are other providers who are far less intrusive and far more ethical and the service is obviously comparable. I already had my DSL turned off because I moved a block from my last house and it turned out that it cut my speed by 1/2 because there was now one more box for my connection to go through.

When I worked at Dell, I learned a great lesson about customer service and it's effect on the corporations. If someone likes a product they may tell one or two people about it. But if you dislike a product, you will tell a minimum of eight people who are then bound to repeat that information. If they think threatening folks is going to reverse the psychology, I think they are sorely mistaken.

/rant off. Sorry.

[Elidor]

5. I wouldn't give those bastards my money in the first place

[ellenfl]

6. any advice on an alternate carrier? eom