Good Morning Dear Readers and All the Ships at Sea!

You know how Comcast keeps offering those 'Special' (read cheaper) deals to new customers. You can get cable TV, Internet and phone service for like five bucks if you are a new customer (OK, an exageration, but there's a point, trust me). If you are a current Comcast customer, you're out of luck.
The cable conglomerate, which rakes in billions every year, figures they have you already. Why try anymore? It's not like you can go somewhere else (RCN, Dish, Verizon?).
Well, that's frustrating enough, but I found another one this week: AT&T wireless.
Apparently, once you are a customer, you can pound sand. My cell phone has been used as a boat, race car, baseball and anything else you can think of that would entertain 10 and 7-year old boys. The front is cracked. The buttons stick. The ring sounds like a dead bird (actually, it is a bird, only a live one).
So, I logged onto AT&T's Web site to upgrade. Found a nice phone, then typed the name into Google to find any reviews.
Along with the reviews, I found out you can get the same phone at Amazon.com for $150 less if you are a new AT&T customer. So, I called customer service. The woman there told me to deal with their price or just cancel.
Not satisfied with that 30 second phone call, I sent an e-mail with my concerns. Here's what I got back:
I apologize for the difference in cost between a phone that Amazon sells versus a phone that we sell. The reason for this is that the equipment that Amazon sells is their equipment and they can choose to sell it for what they choose to sell it for. They sometimes choose to take losses on their equipment to make more money in the long run. All companies that simply sell our service for us can do this. These companies usually also have an item in their contract in addition to ours. This item states that if you get a discounted phone from them and then choose to cancel, for whatever reason, you will pay them an early termination fee. This is on top of our early termination fee and does not matter whether we waive the fee or not. If you choose to get the phone from Amazon, please make sure that you are aware of all conditions for getting the phone at that wonderful price. I am sorry we are not able to price match it.
So, in other words, we have you, pound sand. AT&T took in $3.2 billion in the second quarter this year. Not too shabby in a year where jobs are being shed like K-Mart shoes.
I realize this doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. There are more important issues out there, but, sometimes, big companies could look out for the little guy.
By the way, Verizon and T-Mobil reps each said they would match any price.

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