|
I keep running away from AT&T. And they keep following me. T-Mobile is a good cellular carrier ... AT&T is going to loot it and screw over its customers, like they do everything. Seriously, does anyone actually like AT&T?
When I temporarily had AT&T DSL, they insisted that I had to use their STMP server and one, single, AT&T-provided email address, only ... well, unless I wanted to shell out a few hundred dollars a month for "business class" DSL. I didn't, of course; I don't rent a server to be tied to any one ISP, especially not a godawful one, and I'd pay a VPN proxy provider before I'd knuckle under to AT&T, but it ticked me off that they tried. I also ditched AT&T.
Now, after all these years, I'm losing my mobile phone company. I haz a sad.
All the corporate excuses in the world -- the best is "if companies make more money per customer, they can innovate more" -- won't make a lack of competition good for the buyer. Never have, never will. And this ... gods, why couldn't it have been the other way around? ... is going to be a perfect example.
Remember: a business's interest are diametrically opposed to yours. Customers want to pay nothing and get everything; businesses want to be paid everything and deliver nothing. Somewhere in between, driven by competition, a middle ground is reached that works for both buyer and seller. But there has to be competition; if there isn't, the only constraint is how much money the customers have to be squeezed out of them before they lose their ability to buy groceries.
|