AT&T Goes For The Jugular, Raises Activation Fees By Up To $15
What we're talking about here is a $5 bump to AT&T's upgrade/activation fee for customers signed up to one- and two-year service contracts, which puts the cost at $45 instead of $40. What's another $5, right? That may be how AT&T saw things when deciding to increase fees, but at $45, it now has the highest upgrade/activation fee in the industry. Here's a look at how AT&T compares to its competitors (two-year service agreements shown):
- AT&T: $45 activation/upgrade fee
- Verizon: $40 activation/upgrade fee
- T-Mobile: N/A
- Spring: $36 activation/upgrade fee
Even more egregious is AT&T's plan to assess Next customers a $15 activation fee. Up to this point, Next plans had the benefit of offering customers no out of pocket expenses. That's about to change, and the same goes for BYOD customers -- like Next subscribers, they'll go from paying no activation/upgrade fees to being hit with a $15 charge.
Droid Life first reported the pending changes, which are set to go live beginning August 1st. While nothing is yet official, a reader at Android Central sent in a photo of a purported internal AT&T document outlining the price changes.
Anyone else thing T-Mobile's outspoken CEO John Legere is going to have a field day with this on on Twitter?