Dragging your bill through the MUC - AT&T's new Minimum Usage Charge on long distance accounts
Don't you just love it when companies charge you for absolutely nothing? No service provided, no goods consumed.Nada. Zip. Zilch. Well, that's what AT&T is doing to its long distance customers with something called a Minimum Usage Charge.
Starting in July, AT&T customers who have AT&T as their long distance provider but don't make any long distance calls will be assessed a $2.00 Minimum Usage Charge. Conveniently shorthanded to MUC, this charge just feels like muck on the bills of AT&T landline customers who don't use their long distance. Even worse, the taxes, fees, and surcharges associated with the MUC raise the total cost for no services rendered to around $4.44 per month. At just a shade over $50 a year, that's no small chunk of change.
So what's a savy customer to do? The best thing to do is vote with your wallet--if you remove AT&T as your long distance provider, you will no longer need to pay the muckety MUC charge and give AT&T $50 a year it didn't earn. It's usually best to put a PIC freeze on your account after you make this change so you can avoid any slamming charges. For a great primer on PIC freezes and other phone-related goodies, here's a link to one by our very own Dr. Telecom:
Did you get hit with this muckety MUC charge? Got a complaint about AT&T? Let us know in the comments or fill out one of our online complaint forms.
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