AT&T just merged with SBC here in California. I've been an AT&T shareholder and a faithful, happy customer for more years than I can remember. A couple of days ago, I got two bills from AT&T. One is apparently from the pre-merger AT&T, and one is apparently from the post-merger AT&T. I guess the new logo is supposed to be a major tip-off that significant things have changed, even though both bills require a check be made out to AT&T and sent to AT&T.
The main reason I'm here writing this slammin' review is because I just realized-- after reading both the bills-- that AT&T has kept me as a customer but they've done away with all my calling plans. Previously we were paying for domestic and international long distance (both plans were each about $3 per month, and gave me rates of $0.07/minute for domestic and $0.09/minute for international calls). Our average usage produced a bill that was around $75/month, including everything. This was year in, year out. Now the new AT&T-- if I go out of my way and get in contact with them, actually select new calling plans, etc.-- seems to be aiming to raise my bill by about $20-25/month, if we maintain the same level of usage as before. I did the math on this and everything... I went back and looked at six months of recent bills to get average usage figures, so I'm not pulling these numbers out of my a$$.
All of this has pretty much pi$$ed me off, so I wanted to come over here and share with you-all. Maybe in a few months I'll be able to tell you how it is being a Verizon customer.