AT&T Asks You To Pay In Advance To Handle Its Credit Problems
Date : 03 Oct 2008 Category : Business
Techdirt
Despite explaining how the financial crisis will impact everyone, beyond just Wall Street, there are many people who still insist that it will have no impact on them. That's simply untrue. While the impacts may seem small and remote, when added up, they'll be noticeable. Richard Ahlquist writes in to show us a perfect example of this. AT&T has discovered that the commercial paper it relies on is now a lot more difficult to get, causing a bit of a cash crunch for the company. So how is it dealing with it? By pushing that cash crunch to you. Rather than its usual habit of billing you for the month that just past, AT&T is telling customers it's now billing them for the month ahead -- meaning that your latest bill may be double (paying for last month and next month). Effectively, AT&T is changing the credit terms on its customers, from net 30 to prepay. Sure, it may not be a huge deal that your telco bill doubles for one month only, but that's still money that's out of your pocket 30 days earlier -- and if other vendors do the same, it could be quite noticeable.
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