Begin forwarded message:
From: Brock N Meeks <bmeeks@cox.net>
Date: April 25, 2008 8:21:39 AM PDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: The World is Going to Hell... The End
Having been a reporter for twenty-plus years, I shouldn't be surprised
by anything; maybe I'm just stupid.
A column out now from MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan chronicles a story
wherein a woman was charged a fee when she went into the AT&T phone
center to pay her bill in cash. Wanna pay your bill, in cash? No
problem, that'll be $5 extra please...
Here's the beginning of Bob's column; URL at end of excerpt:
Rhonda Payne went to an AT&T Wireless store in Calhoun, Ga., recently
to pay her phone bill in cash. She'd been hit by ID theft and was
forced to close her checking account, so she was worried she wouldn’t
be able to mail a check on time. But when she arrived at the store,
she was in for a surprise.
Paying in person, she was told, costs extra -- $2 extra.
Payne objected to the "administrative charge" that was added to her
bill but got no sympathy. Instead, she said, she was told she should
consider herself lucky because the fee was about to go up to $5.
"I was told that it was a courtesy to take cash,” she said. “I said,
‘Are you kidding me?'”
It’s no joke. Beginning earlier this year, AT&T Wireless began to
charge customers who pay their bills in their stores.
"It is a way of saving money ... it helps us keep our costs lower,"
said AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel. "We want our associates to spend
their time helping customers as they are thinking about their wireless
plans or looking at phones."
[snip]
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/04/paying-cash-at.html#posts