A local news story here (St. Louis) has various businesses, governments, and home telephone users up in arms about a new charge on their phone bills. The new charges, expected to last as much as four years, are AT&T’s way of collecting the money they need to pay off a settled lawsuit that was filed by local municipalities in Missouri over non-payment, or low payment, of revenue taxes by AT&T. The judge who oversaw the settlement approved the pass-through of the costs to customers, and the lawyers for the municipalities didn’t object.
So residents will be paying anywhere from 1.99 and up per month per line, and businesses 3.50 and up per line. This is a windfall for the municipalities who sued, as they will now get to see these revenues go straight into their coffers. They claimed in their lawsuit that AT&T was not paying revenue taxes at the rates they were supposed to. The municipalities won. But the customers will be the ones who pay. AT&T has to come up with no money out of their own pockets, as Missouri’s Public Service Commission allows the pass-through of such judgments onto customers.
I wonder if the municipalities thought about this before they decided to sue. I know customers are raging; customers in my county are part of the settlement and if I still had a landline, I’m sure I’d be noticing the increase in the bill. We still might on our DSL service, I’ll have to see the bill when it comes in.
This kind of “doing business” is really good for AT&T’s shareholders and bottom line, but it certainly doesn’t earn them any points in the “good neighbor” category.