muhammadsaleem.com — Here's an email from an AT&T employee that saw a story on Digg and responded by explaining how AT&T is aware of the problem with the enormous bills they have been sending to people, and how they are fixing it as we speak.
Aug 16, 2007 View in Crawl 4
mattacheckAug 16, 2007
As if anyone on digg cared about the trees or postage. It was fun to bitch and point fingers at an obvious oversight by a big name company that 90% of digg readers think they could work for if they had a chance. Party's over...everybody go home.
isaidcheeseAug 16, 2007
I worked for as a programmer in the billing department up until about a year ago. I'd be surprised it they got this fixed quickly. Here's why:That part of AT&T's billing is actually still with the old BellSouth team. BellSouth contracted that work to Accenture years ago and Accenture has been pimping it out to other subcontractors and to their data center in India. With the AT&T merger, they have been firing Accenture and Accenture Contractors steadily. 100 here and a 100 there... It's to the point now where there are hardly any programmers left in the "Billing Tower" (as they call it). AT&T plans to convert the BellSouth billing system over to their own over the next year or so... They just left a skeleton crew of programmers to fix major problems like ABENDS and stuff.. No Development or Enhancement work.Bottom line - They don't have anyone left over there that has the time and/or energy to make the programming changes required to summarize the bill. It won't happen till AT&T takes over Cingular billing.
happyscrappyAug 16, 2007
Ahhh, they turned it into a money making opportunity. $1.99 to get detailed billing.They didn't care about the environment, they cared about the cost of the paper.
Closed AccountAug 16, 2007
But they ARE doing it to save money. Come on, do you really believe that AT&T would make it a priority to do something for the environment if it didn't help their bottom line?
broeksAug 16, 2007
because blocking one IP address is effective right?
owdenbowdenAug 16, 2007
I NEVER trust the nsAT&T
sopiemunkyAug 17, 2007
Just to clear something up, the end of the email (the part that was omitted) was just me saying, "I'm not trying to defend AT&T, just stating the policies that have changed." Or something along those lines. Dunno why he'd omit that. It was nothing significant.Yes, I am just a small call center employee. I just started working for AT&T a couple of months ago. I have no influence whatsoever on what AT&T does. I was just stating a policy that changed last week. No, Digg did not have an influence on it (to my knowledge anyway), this policy was already going on as of last week. It's been something they have actually been trying to take into effect for months now--I remember reading about it in emails back when I was still in training back in May. August 10th just happened to be the official launch date of the Summary Bill.And yes, I'm pretty sure AT&T's agenda isn't 100% saving trees. I doubt charging people for call details prevents them from sleeping at night.To M4tt3r: I actually typed up that email exactly like this. Capitalization and all. It was the guy's website that automatically made all letters convert to lowercase. I guess it is more hip that way. I do not know. :-D
ibanezfooAug 18, 2007
Don't pat yourself on the back or anything. Sorry, but a bunch of pasty overweight hightschool nerds don't have much to do with company policy. Nice try though. You can go cry in the corner now because you are worthless and your dad hates you.