Some people thought there wasn't another way to hate AT&T more than we already do... well, AT&T did it again. I have an iPhone, as you probably know. I love my iPhone. I love my Apple products, but I despise AT&T for their terrible service, stupid customer service reps, and now this problem:

In a nutshell, they disabled my internet. I'm paying for unlimited internet, yet throughout the day, I've been being charged as if I didn't have that plan. In order words, my iPhone automatically billed me for over $50 today for internet related charges only. According to the customer rep I'm speaking to now, this problem happened to everybody with an iPhone. This is just a terrible excuse from a terrible company, and I'm going to blog about it. If they wanted to avoid bad word of mouth from this, they would offer every iPhone customer with a free month of internet or something among those lines.

My two cents: Avoid AT&T! Tell everybody you know how terrible they are!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

AT&T made the fake and *smart* move to allow everyone in Southern California free Wi-Fi access. Kieran Nolan, AT&T vice president and general manager wants to help the community during this rough time and recovery. If for whatever reason you don't know, Southern Cali was affected by pretty bad fires.

Everybody hates AT&T, including three unnamed employees I've spoken to who work there. The obvious thing to do is for me to question their true motives behind offering free Wi-Fi to SoCal. First off, their brand image has been terrible in the recent years. They gobbled up Cingular (which for some reason, people liked better) and decided to drop the name in favor of AT&T. There's been a management change, logo change, marketing attitude change, and it seems to be working... sorta.

AT&T gets a new logo. PayPal recently changed the graphics on their website too. Why? To help eliminate the bad rap associated with their old (and current) brand. Notice the change in graphic and shift to lowercase letters...

Then the move to work with Apple's iPhone. All of a sudden, AT&T is associated with iPhone. iPhone = Cool, AT&T = Still lame.

Recently, AT&T started posting up internet ads and city billboards advertising how their cell service works in more places than before. Notice the advertisement I saw on Gizmodo the other day:

Fail. And now, they're trying to be nice by offering SoCal residents free Wi-Fi. Does it make them look like a kind and caring company? To be honest, to me, it came off as being a fake way to gain more loyal customers for when things settled down and Wi-Fi costs money again.

I'll give these AT&T people some credit. The change in branding is good. The change in management still sucks, but better than before. The agreement with Apple was brilliant. The advertisement campaign was a pathetic attempt to look like a cool, young, hip company. The decision to allow SoCal residents free Wi-Fi was also a smart move.

All in all, AT&T is improving. Their numbers are up. (probably because of the Apple agreement) However, I still thing they have a lot they need to improve on. Inner-company efficiency is terrible. Their branding still looks lame. I'll continue to critique them until they get it right.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

I've been an AT&T customer since the iPhone came out and I despise them. The support sucks, the service sucks, and the company sucks. My connections from AT&T are basically living versions of Dilbert.

AT&T decided to be dumber than they already are. They recently created the above advertisement - I've seen it on quite a few websites and even on billboards in San Francisco. What a huge waste of time and money. I mean, who the hell makes up a city with a terrible name to advertise their product? Why would I want to pay for bad cell phone service if their advertising staff is drooling enough to decide that this is a great idea?

There's much more at stake than wasting time and money. Bad advertising is destroying the brand. eBay screwed up with their windorphins ad campaign. Ask.com also had meaningless billboards and TV ads that didn't get anybody to use the search engine. At the Searchnomics conference, everybody was coming up to the Ask.com employees, asking them why they had such dumb forms of marketing. Point being, this is a botched attempt to make AT&T look like a "fun" company.

If you see any of these ads on the highway, please let me know!

[Credit to Drew Levin for his collaboration] Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

EDIT: (10/17 @ 1PM PST)Samsung decided to be smart and send me a phone. I'm hoping to receive it later this week! When I get it, I'll be sure to compare it to the iPhone.

As of Yesterday, I received in the mail a 2nd day FedEx package and wondered who might be calling... why, it was from Samsung! A nice white folder packed with BLACKJACK information guides and a disk with everything digitized. (for those who don't know, the BLACKJACK is a "robust, slim smart device packed with the power and functionality desired by business customers and consumers alike" - says Samsung's information packet)

To sum it up, I wasn't impressed. I could have found everything I wanted just by surfing Google. My request to Samsung is basically: Send me REAL phones and MAYBE I'll blog about it! I wish this PR firm for Samsung (MWWGroup) took a more personal approach to social marketing and the blogosphere. We bloggers love getting personalized mail; not the crappy generic product/service descriptions that everybody else gets.

Until Samsung or Nokia or anyone else sends me REAL phones, I'll continue to evangelize my Apple iPhone. That is, until my battery explodes.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.