Sorry telecom companies, but you aren’t allowed to bombard consumers with indiscriminate rate hikes. (After all, it’s not like you’re an insurance company.)
Bravo to Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office, which forced AT&T to refund Illinois consumers whose "Consumers Choice" packages were unexpectedly overcharged, and even got the company to agree to future rate concessions.
In one element of those concessions, the AT&T unit will forgo the last of three rate hikes that the ICC has previously authorized, which was scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2009. AT&T Illinois will also freeze the current 4 cents per local call rate for 18 months, providing a savings to customers who pay basic per-call rates an estimated $4 million through July 1, 2010.
In addition, AT&T Illinois has agreed to cap the "Consumers Choice" packages for another year. The ICC approved those packages to protect consumers from expected price increases resulting from deregulation, and under the accord with Madigan's office, AT&T Illinois will retain those low-priced, bare-bones packages through November of 2011, "saving consumers another $1 million."
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