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October 12, 2019 01:25 am

AT&T Raises Prices 7% By Making Its Customers Pay AT&T's Property Taxes

"AT&T has been charging business Internet customers a 'property tax' fee, claiming it needs to charge this to recover AT&T's own property taxes," reports Ars Technica. "AT&T has been charging the fee for at least a couple of years and just hit customers in California with an increase that more doubled the fee." From the report: Scott Phillips, owner of a small business called Valley View Media in Santa Clarita, California, signed up for AT&T fiber Internet service and a block of static IP addresses, agreeing to an all-in price of $95 a month. His order summary, which he shared with us, specifically says that the $95 ongoing monthly price includes taxes and fees. The document makes no mention of property taxes. But when Phillips got his first bill on July 1, which he also shared with Ars, it contained this notice: "Effective October 1, 2019, there will be an increase in the AT&T Cost Assessment Charge used to recover AT&T property taxes. The monthly rate will change from 2.92% to 7.00% of your total AT&T Business Internet, Phone and/or U-verse TV monthly charges. This charge is not a tax or fee that the government requires AT&T to collect from its customers." That first bill included exactly $95 in recurring charges, consisting of $60 for 100Mbps download Internet and $35 for the static IP addresses, just as AT&T promised. (There was also a one-time installation fee of $99.) While the property-tax fee notice on that first bill suggested he was already paying a 2.92% charge on top of the $95, the first few bills didn't actually include a separate property-tax fee. But when Phillips' October bill came, AT&T imposed the 7% property-tax fee, adding $6.65 to the $95 base price. The actual billing increase was thus for the full 7%, not just for the difference between 2.92% and 7%. The report notes that AT&T has been charging the property-tax fee to business customers since at least mid-2017. At the time, the then-new fee was 1.08% of the monthly bill, but an AT&T customer reported earlier this year that the fee was raised from 2% to 6.69%. In a (vague) statement, AT&T said: "Like others in the industry, we regularly evaluate and adjust our prices based on the costs to deliver our services, as well as costs associated with government and regulatory mandates. We communicated these changes to our customers and will continue to work with them to best meet their needs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/EUXmpcjYzA4/att-raises-prices-7-by-making-its-customers-pay-atts-property-taxes

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