AT&T Wireless Accused Of Hurricane Price Gouging

Wireless

from the how-nice dept

As Florida braces for its third major hurricane in about a month, mobile phone carriers are, once again, ready to do whatever it takes to help residents… or, possibly, to rip them off. When the last hurricane hit, both Cingular and Sprint were quick to offer free calling stations to local residents who needed to call family and friends to let them know they were okay. T-Mobile made news by giving away free WiFi. All three seemed like good moves for a state ripped to shreds by hurricanes. However, on the other side, doing little to improve their somewhat dreadful reputation these days, AT&T Wireless is being accused of using the opportunity to do a little price gouging, by jacking up their per-minute and connection fees. The details suggest that it wasn’t so much AT&T Wireless, but, rather the failure of AT&T Wireless’ network along with those of some roaming partners, such that the calls went over the networks of some third party providers at somewhat ridiculous price levels. AT&T Wireless claims they’ll refund the extra cash on the next bill, but it still looks bad that this happened at all.