This was written a few weeks ago, though never sent. Mostly, I guess, I needed to blow off steam. Since then, I signed a two-year contract with Verizon making my doing business with AT&T in the future considerably less likely.

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Dear AT&T,

I have been a customer of AT&T Wireless and its predecessors for twelve years or so. I got a phone with a company called ColCall that became part of Cingular and when I was living in Deseret I was with Skyline Mobile, which was part of the AT&T network.

I have temporarily relocated to Callie, Arapaho, where you don’t yet provide coverage though you will soon be taking over the local Galaxy Mobile. When you had to cut off my data plan, I understood because it wasn’t fair to you to have to pay for the local towers while I get situated. So satisfied have I been with AT&T that I was going to bide my time with a local provider and switch to AT&T as soon as you arrived. Until recently, you have always done right by me.

However, late last year you enacted a policy requiring that smartphone users get a data plan. Until I got a data plan last year, I had always used my smartphone the same way that I used my PDA before it except with a phone attached so I have one less thing to remember before I head out the door. I did enjoy having the data plan while I had it, but I always appreciated the fact that if I needed to save money I could always go back to doing what I did before.

Though I guess I am currently grandfathered in, from what I understand I can never upgrade or replace my phone without signing up for a data plan that I am not sure I will need. This is a slap in the face from a company that I had come to expect more from and a company that I have defended and proselytized for in the face of some recent bad publicity. One of the things I have always appreciated about AT&T is that (unless I am under contract) my phone was my business. When Verizon told me that I could not have a data phone without a data plan regardless of contract, I told them I would just wait for AT&T (or until I relocated back into AT&T’s coverage area) because they would not do that.

You’ve made me eat those words and have made me question a lot of what I thought was the freedom of doing business with AT&T. My options in Callie while I am here are limited, so I’ll be honest and say that you may well retain my business. However, you have lost my loyalty.

Sincerely,

Will Truman
Callie, AO