Equipment rental Fee's

AT&T gets us going and coming. I (we) pay for the  service (DSL) plus an additional fee of $10 monthly even if I were to use my (our) own equipment. I would view AT&T more favorably if they were to simply raise the cost of DSL by $10. That would be better than double dipping by calling it a "equipment fee". If us customers switch to our own equipment you shouldn't charge us $10 for equipment we don't use. At least rename or classify the fee.

Now, with that being said I have marked this as "accepted solution". I just wanted to express my opinion. Escalation may be in order?

Thanks!

I agree.  If they would change "equipment fee" to "usage fee" or even "line fee", it would be less deceptive.

As far as escalation, the fee is in the TOS and everyone pays it.

ATT Cares just pm'd me. Told me that if I brought my own equipment I would no longer have to pay the fee. They apologized for the confusion.

👏🇺🇸

That would be the exception to the rule.  Time will tell.

Hi Paran41,

We appreciate your time and patience.

We’ll be here should you need anything else!

Mihai AT&T Community Specialist

So if someone buys their own modem they can avoid the $10/mth fee too?  I'm asking for a friend.    

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@skeeterintexas wrote:

So if someone buys their own modem they can avoid the $10/mth fee too?  I'm asking for a friend.    

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No.  As my thoughts stated above, "you may use a private purchase unit it does not remove the gateway fee "

@Paran41,

I regret to inform you that Mihai is wrong.  Very wrong.  Stupid wrong.  Completely wrong.  Absolutely wrong deceptive.  The only way to truly "avoid" the monthly fee is with some new-subscriber promotions that give you a credit for the amount of the fee for a limited period of time.  It has been many years since you could avoid the fee by using your own device (unless you were already in that situation at the time of the policy change and were grandfathered in).

EDIT: Actually, wait.  If you parse exactly what he said, he's not wrong, but it appears he wrote something intended to be misconstrued:

If you bring your own device, you won’t have the $10 service fee to lease it from AT&T.

You won't be paying to lease it, because you already own it.  This is true.  Tom-a-to. Six.

You will however still be paying for the service with us.

Yet you still have to pay the $10 fee for the service.  Tom-ah-to.  Half-dozen.

Hi @Paran41 and @JefferMC,

I apologize about any confusion as well as your experience. We will go back and amend the previous post by our agent as it wasn’t completely accurate.

To answer your question, as of January 1, 2015, all of our equipment will have a fee. The equipment fee is for maintenance of the equipment, meaning replacements and periodical firmware updates that occur. You can refer to our Terms of Service for any questions regarding the maintenance fee being charged on purchased equipment. Please refer to section 7.(a).

Please note that the U-verse equipment provided during your installation cannot be replaced with any other modem (router) that has not been provided by AT&T. Although we don't support third party equipment you do have the option to purchase a third party device to use for enhanced performance behind your AT&T modem (router).

Thanks

Tim, AT&T Community Strategy