Border Blogs: Expressing our Border Culture

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, todays amigos are tomorrow’s enemies. Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. My enemy’s enemy is my friend. I could go on and on with clichés that all end up with the fact that politics is just about the dirtiest and grimiest endeavor anyone can get involved in. Tie that with the fact that sensational headlines sell newspapers and accepting that The El Paso Times is the slimiest newspaper in the world all leads to one indisputable fact; that El Paso’s corruption is enabled by an entrenched political machine allowed to operate by a news media that trips all over itself trying to make news rather than to report it.

With that in mind plus the frustration that is El Paso corruption I have brought back the El Paso Forum for political discussion, dissection and outright dissention. I fully expect all of the political operatives to attempt to make the El Paso Forum their own platform for their message, it is par for the course, but what I really want and what I crave is for the frustrated and disenfranchised masses to have a sounding board to quickly get their anger off their chests with quick drive-by messages to the world.

Will it solve the political crisis? No. Will it server a greater good, probably not. But it should at least give the oppressed a small outlet to work through the morass of political shenanigans in the community.

It is no secret that I believe the El Paso Times is corrupt and easily manipulated. My comments aren’t directed at the majority of the reporters because they are hampered by the corporate bureaucracy that sees El Paso as an insignificant little corner in world that generates no real revenues for the corporate owners. It also doesn’t help that print media revenues are under continuous assault by the new media that is the Internet. That is why it is no surprise that Bob Moore has once again been directed to run the El Paso operation as his shenanigans have no real impact on the corporate owners and it keeps them from having to fire him and deal with the legal ramifications of that.

It is incredulous to me that all major institutional organizations in the world, including political and security operators universally agree that the El Paso-Cd. Juárez corridor is a major transit point for the majority of illicit drugs that enter the American market, yet El Paso is a ‘safe’ city. Yet, the death merchants are waging a bloody war on the Mexican side of the border and the politicians on the American side of the border proclaim that it is one of the ‘safest’ cities in the United States. They would have us believe that once the drugs get past the border they magically disappear and no one knows how.

Of course, if that were my only argument then it would be just a crazy notion on my part. But we also have a former city representative, now running for Congress, Beto O’Rourke, who not only has publically advocated for drug legalization but has also written a book in support of it. Some of you would probably argue that it’s his opinion and he should be entitled to it. Sure, but like everything else follow the money.

O’Rourke doesn’t only advocate drug legalization but his mother pleaded guilty on behalf of her company to illegally hiding money from the government. Why would someone want to structure cash? The only people looking to structure large amounts of cash and thus hiding it from government oversight are those looking to avoid taxes or most likely, avoid having to explain to the government where the money came from. Hmmm, sounds to me like money laundering.

Let’s see, money laundering and a politician looking to take office at the federal level where drug legislation can be manipulated. Oh yea, let’s not forget that the local police department had to be put on probation because its drug laboratory failed basic standards and a police department that currently has officers being indicted for falsifying public records and the same police department that had a former high-ranking administrator accuse the department of colluding with drug dealers. Yes, that is the department that trumpets the loudest how safe the city is.

Oh, and I almost forgot, a former director of the local FBI incarcerated for hiding a friendship and receiving economic benefits from a businessman from Mexico without properly documenting it to the authorities. As if that wasn’t enough, a former County Judge, Dolores Briones, pleading guilty to corruption, a former El Paso Chamber of Commerce and non-profit darling, Bob Jones in jail for defrauding the federal government and thus the taxpayers. And the list goes on and on.

And through all this, the local political shenanigans involves an advocate of legalizing drugs, funded by big money with everything to gain and O’Rourke groupies; a sitting city representative, Susie Byrd, who co-wrote the book on drug legalization with O’Rourke, another sitting representative, Steve Ortega who has no business in Mexico documenting how long it takes to cross the border on the only day of the week that city representatives are required to meet and a married county judge who sees nothing wrong with getting drunk with Beto O’Rourke on a night out on the town and slapping him on the ass all tripping themselves trying to ingratiate themselves into O’Rourke’s friend circle.

And, we are expected to believe that drug dealers are so afraid of the local policing and government efforts of El Paso that they dare not bring their violence across the border? Please!

Or, as is more likely, the city of El Paso is so corrupt that the drug dealers don’t even have to bother to pay extortion fees on the US side, they just put the people friendly to them in office. With friendlies in government there is just no need to bring violence across the border as their drugs just mysteriously disappear into the rest of the United States. Why create a problem if there is no need to do so?

Through all this, and I’ve only mentioned a very small portion of the evidence of corruption rampant within the community, where has the El Paso Times been? When Bob Jones was the darling of the city, his corrupt money trickled down to the advertising sold in the paper and now that he’s in jail, what does the local paper need? Another benefactor to feed it. Would proper investigative journalism do the trick? Hmmm, no that might bite the hand that doles out the little money for advertising in a city where corruption rules.

Follow the money! Who’s vying for office and who’s funding campaigns? Who benefits the drug dealers? Who advocates for drug dealers? And, who does the local paper support? It can’t be plainer than that.

And what about the Diario de Juárez? The Diario is so inept that news is nothing more than skimpily dressed women gracing its pages. Its El Paso operation is a disgrace to its Juárez counterpart because the local leader is too afraid to aggravate anyone lest he’s ignored by the powers-that-be at the local country clubs. He’s too busy ingratiating himself with the PDNG that he’ll throw his own father under the bridge if it means he’ll get a smile at the club house.

For those just tired of the political diatribe but too busy to get involved to make the community better or too afraid to mess with a hornet’s nest of corruption, the El Paso Forum is for you. Enjoy and make the best of it, at worst it just becomes another gripe outlet or at best it shines a light on the cockroaches that hide in the darkness enabled by the El Paso Times. It’s your playground. Enjoy!

http://www.elpasoforum.com

As a web developer I constantly run into situations that remind me that clients and advertising agencies do not fully comprehend the website development industry. It is as if the marketplace considers an Internet presence as nothing more than a necessary exercise designed to be able to state; “yes, we have a website”.  The Internet has revolutionized the way we interact with each other and the way we do business. Unfortunately it has a created a culture based on “free” and a haphazard approach to solving a business problem.

Other than “everything is free” or “cheap” on the Internet, the other problem I frequently encounter is the concept that websites are nothing more than marketing tools for businesses. Unfortunately this concept is driven by advertising agencies that have yet to fully understand or embrace the concept that a website is an extension of the client’s customer service process rather than a marketing gimmick. There are times that a specialized website for a promotion is appropriate and effective but for a company’s primary website the focus should be on customer service rather than on marketing the business.

I realize that this concept goes against the grain of the majority of web builders out there but it that does not make me wrong. A website is not a fancy brochure and it shouldn’t be used as such. A website should be a tool that your business uses to extend services to your customers, at their time and at their leisure.

Focusing a business website as a fancy marketing tool leads to situations where the focus is on the “bells” and “whistles” of the website and not on the technology of it. Frequently it is about making it as fancy as possible rather than as useful as it should be.

A client of ours asked us to create a link to a local hospital on the Internet for them. As is our custom, we first verified that the link was working before completing the task for the client. As I went to the link I was immediately chastised by the website with the following warning: “Attention, [w]e have determined that you are using a browser or mobile browser that is not fully compatible with this website”. The warning message goes on to let me know that certain features may not work properly for me.

I was intrigued by the message that at first seemed to be a warning about malicious activity on the Internet but, in fact, was telling me that I’m using incompatible equipment.

My browsing sin?

I was using Microsoft’s latest Internet Explorer 9, as is it has been out since last year and it is common practice to keep our software up to date. According to the website I visited, my browser did not meet its requirements that are that I use an older version of a browser to visit their site. As if that wasn’t enough of an inconvenience, I was given a very limited list of browser that I could use to visit this website.

I visited this website for a very specific thing, which is how most people land on a website, and I left it knowing only one thing about the company that this website represents; nothing.

That’s right, if it weren’t because I took the time to screen capture the messages I wouldn’t even be able to tell you who the site belongs to or what it does because I was so focused on the distraction of the warning message that everything else became secondary.

For Sierra Providence Health Network, the brand image that their website portrays is that you better come visit us with the right tools or don’t bother to visit our website. The unfortunate thing for the company is that they probably aren’t aware of this because their designer was simply too lazy to explain to management that they can have all of the bells and whistles they want but that they have to remember that technology drives the Internet so accommodations for all types of computers, Internet connections and browser types need to be made. Whether it is a website that accommodates the majority of what users are using or multiple versions of the site are required is something that the management of the hospital needs to be made aware of. That is the job of the web designer that took responsibility for designing this web page.

Whatever image Sierra Providence Health Network is trying to give visitors to its website is quickly replaced with a negative impression of the company because the person driving the website presence is stuck in a marketing mindset that has no place in today’s Internet driven consumer.

The potential loss of millions of user’s legitimate data is a wakeup call for those who rely on free services for business and other data protection services. The Internet has dramatically changed the way we do business but it has also created a self-serving mentality that everything is free for the taking, even for business use.

In today’s difficult economic climate, businesses are looking for ways to cut costs and many of those have resorted to free or very low-cost solutions for their Internet needs. There is nothing wrong with finding ways to cut costs but those cost cutting measures are putting many businesses in serious jeopardy. Stealing clip-art from a Google search result or using free online storage services is a dangerous business decision.

On January 26, 2012, the FBI, along with other policing agents in other countries shut down the file-sharing site MegaUpload immediately cutting off access to files stored by millions of users world-wide. According to the arrest and search warrants served on MegaUpload, it is accused of facilitating the illegal exchange of copyrighted material. Although the company is based in Hong Kong, those apprehended were arrested in New Zealand and some of the servers that hosted the files were located on United States soil, thus allowing the United States the opportunity to prosecute the operators of the service, the ultimate result is that millions of people are without access to their data today. It is very likely that the data will be lost before a final determination is made in this case.

The issue with MegaUpload for users is in the business model used by that service to provide services to its members. This business model is the same business model that drives popular sites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and thousands of other websites that people have come to rely on. The business model is to bring as many eyeballs as possible to a targeted advertisement. The more traffic viewing the advertising the more successful the company is.

There are two ways to drive traffic to create the revenues that keep these massive operations going. The first is the legitimate work done by the investments of large amounts of money in traditional advertising to create awareness of the website. And, the other, is the quasi-legitimate and in many instances the illegal process of creating traffic. Thus we have the problem with SPAM and the prosecution of MegaUpload.

The times when someone could launch a website and traffic would significantly increase is long gone now that each website service is competing among millions of others. It is just not possible to promote a website without investing in advertising.

In the case of MegaUpload, the prosecution alleges that the service was used to share illegally copied movies in violation of copyright laws. For those that are wondering how can that be a criminal offense and why the FBI is involved must have missed the FBI warning that comes up right before you start watching a movie. In case you wondered if that warning served any purpose whatsoever, you now know that the FBI does, in fact, throw people in jail for illegally copying movies. Whether the US government will prevail in the prosecution of this company is still up for debate. What is not is that MegaUpload was used by millions of users.

Not all of those users committed a criminal offense and used the service to store legitimate files. Those users, nonetheless, are without access to their files today. They may never get them back.

According to the prosecution, MegaUpload had a small percentage of users who paid for the service of storing files in the cloud. The rest of the revenues for the company were made from advertising. In order for the advertising to generate sufficient revenues for the company, millions of eyeballs had to see them. And this is where the problem started for the legitimate users.

The legitimate users are not sufficient to generate the traffic needed, thus the company had to rely on the eyeballs looking for illegally copied movies to generate the necessary traffic to the site. Whether the company was complicit in this will be eventually determined by the judicial process.

The legitimate users whose files are not accessible and who may ultimately loose them have only themselves to blame for their predicament. Those businesses that continue to rely on online services for free services will eventually find themselves in the same predicament. Someone has to pay for the servers and the Internet connections to those servers. Relying on free website whose business model is to give away free service is unsustainable and will eventually collapse. How will that look to your company’s customers? Saving a few bucks today could and up costing you your business in the end.

On January 24, 2012, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate and a similar bill is pending before the House of Representatives. Both, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and PROTECT-IP (PIPA) in the Senate are misguided attempts to deal with online intellectual property theft. Unfortunately their approach is draconian and goes against the fundamental principles of free speech and fair and equal protection under the law. Furthermore the Acts, as proposed, unilaterally impose sanctions against citizens of other countries without giving them the benefit of the due-process so enshrined in the US Constitution.

Under the Acts, a properly worded letter is all it would take to force a company, like Google to stop delivering search results for a targeted website, or a payment processor to stop accepting payments for a website or an Internet provider to stop delivering service. That’s it, a letter is sufficient to infringe on the rights of a website provider without recourse to due-process. Most egregious is that the legislation targets foreign website operators while leaving US-controlled domain names; .com, .net & .org under the umbrella of the protections of due-process. Unfortunately in their haste, the supporters of the legislation didn’t realize, or maybe they did, that US citizens also own and operate the website addresses they are targeting.

If this is allowed to happen, American citizens could be subjected to retaliatory legislative measures from other countries simply by having a website. Here is an example of one country’s wayward laws targeted at American citizens and the personal cost to the individual.

American Citizen, Joe Gordon was sentenced to two and a half years of prison in December 2011 for insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Gordon had translated “The King Never Smiles”, a book banned in Thailand, and uploaded it unto the Internet while in the United States. Gordon is now serving a prison sentence, while awaiting a Royal pardon, for exercising his right to free speech.

His crime? Insulting the Thai monarch.

The Internet has given us the power to express ourselves and we all benefit from it. As passive readers or active participants the Internet empowers everyone, including those in repressive nations. To espouse freedom and Democracy for other countries while attempting to implement draconian measures is duplicity at its best. Either the Congress is for open freedom of speech and the free flow of information or it is about protecting the self-interests of a small minority.

One need not go further than Rupert Murdoch’s recent Tweeter tirade in support of SOPA in order to understand the fundamental drive for it. Murdoch went on a Twitter rampage shortly after the Obama administration conceded that it had reservations over the controls proposed by the legislation.

Murdoch wrote; “Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery”. Murdoch called Google the “piracy leader” through his Tweets. Murdoch used the very system he wishes he could shut off to express his fervent need to control the Internet to his own liking, or that of his pocket book which is probably the same.

That is the fundamental flaw in the legislation in that it punitively punishes innocent infringers by the actions of their membership without giving them the opportunity to respond via the time honored tradition of your day in court. Murdoch’s stance is understandable; his revenues are under heavy stress because his revenue model simply cannot compete in a connected world. Rather than adapt to a digital world, he would rather have Congress pass legislation that he can wield to hold the tide back for him.

Intellectual property theft is a serious problem not only for single-man bloggers but for multi-national conglomerates as well. Intellectual property is the single most important asset the United States is able to actively complete in the world market with, but to create legislation contrary to the fundamental guarantees to the US Constitution is not only foolhardy but dangerous to American citizens.

Wikipedia and Reddit, among other notable websites will go dark tomorrow, January 18, 2011 for twenty-four hours to protest this misguided attempt by Murdoch and his cohorts. You can do your part to thwart a would be attempt to censor the vehicle we have all come to rely on by calling or writing to your Congressmen to let them know you do not support these bills:

Click here for a Directory of Representatives.

The following is a list of cosponsors of the SOPA bill:

H.R.3261
Latest Title: Stop Online Piracy Act
Sponsor: Rep Smith, Lamar [TX-21] (introduced 10/26/2011)      Cosponsors (31)
Related Bills:S.968, S.1228
COSPONSORS(31), ALPHABETICAL
Rep Amodei, Mark E. [NV-2] – 11/3/2011
Rep Baca, Joe [CA-43] – 12/7/2011
Rep Barrow, John [GA-12] – 11/14/2011
Rep Bass, Karen [CA-33] – 11/3/2011
Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28] – 10/26/2011
Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] – 10/26/2011
Rep Bono Mack, Mary [CA-45] – 10/26/2011
Rep Carter, John R. [TX-31] – 11/3/2011
Rep Chabot, Steve [OH-1] – 10/26/2011
Rep Chu, Judy [CA-32] – 11/30/2011
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] – 10/26/2011
Rep Cooper, Jim [TN-5] – 12/12/2011
Rep Deutch, Theodore E. [FL-19] – 10/26/2011
Rep Gallegly, Elton [CA-24] – 10/26/2011
Rep Goodlatte, Bob [VA-6] – 10/26/2011
Rep Griffin, Tim [AR-2] – 10/26/2011
Rep Holden, Tim [PA-17] – 11/30/2011
Rep King, Peter T. [NY-3] – 11/3/2011
Rep Larson, John B. [CT-1] – 11/30/2011
Rep Lujan, Ben Ray [NM-3] – 11/14/2011
Rep Marino, Tom [PA-10] – 11/3/2011
Rep Nunnelee, Alan [MS-1] – 11/3/2011
Rep Owens, William L. [NY-23] – 11/14/2011
Rep Quayle, Benjamin [AZ-3] – 12/13/2011
Rep Ross, Dennis [FL-12] – 10/26/2011
Rep Scalise, Steve [LA-1] – 11/14/2011
Rep Schiff, Adam B. [CA-29] – 10/26/2011
Rep Sherman, Brad [CA-27] – 12/7/2011
Rep Terry, Lee [NE-2] – 10/26/2011
Rep Wasserman Schultz, Debbie [FL-20] – 11/3/2011
Rep Watt, Melvin L. [NC-12] – 11/3/2011

Freedom of Speech needs to be protected and nurtured or we will lose it. Take action and let them know you care.

During the last couple of years I was in El Paso Texas, one of the most vocal public policy arguments was the notion of infill development and downtown revitalization. Wrapped around the nostalgia of yester-year walk able communities, the notion of “new urbanism” seems to have manifested itself across various communities, including El Paso. As with any public policy endeavor one must look at what is the driving force behind it.

As the public commentary rages on, the issue of new urbanism has interested me. Coupled with my interest in the movement, my frequent cross-country travels and my previous experience living in other major cities; the façade of “walk able communities”, “cost-cutting savings” and “better communities” has begun to peel away to reveal the ugliness and failures of a design movement designed to fail from the onset.

My recent experience in San Francisco, my recent move to Orlando and my Thanksgiving trip to South Beach crystalized for me the failure that is “new urbanism”. The Achilles heel for the walk able communities is the fact that people are not meant to be concentrated on top of each other.

If humans had been meant to concentrate themselves together in dense groupings then we would never had ventured beyond our original borders in search of greener pastures. Yet, our history continues to show that we strive to expand our influence across vast spaces in search of some distance from each other. Although we build communities and linkages among ourselves, these are not indications of our need to live on top of each other, rather they are support mechanisms designed to pool our resources while keeping our remoteness from one another.

The empirical evidence is clear, large cities designed vertically beget community problems socially and health wise that rarely, if ever, manifest themselves in rural communities. Although urban sprawl is the “ugly word” du jour, my experience is showing me that the movement is being driven not from a need to be socially conscious but rather, it is being manipulated by some that stand to make money from forcing “new urbanism” into community policy.

Take for example South Beach. Displaced community members were the original developers of the community. Once the community was made sustainable, the pioneers were forced economically out of their established communities where they had chosen to build a legacy for themselves. The evidence supports this as well as in San Francisco. Once the South Beach community was established, the erosion of the pioneers was again begun and today, the original settlers are nowhere to be found.

They were not forced out by overt displacement, but rather they were displaced economically as South Beach was reinvented to serve well-heeled residents looking for nostalgic playgrounds for themselves. And so the cycle repeats itself again, the pioneers, that attempt to build a legacy for themselves are forced out economically only to be replaced by nomadic, temporary settlers looking for another playground to place temporary roots on.

If “new urbanism” created “sustainable communities” then I would be hard-pressed to condemn them. But San Francisco and South Beach have clearly shown me that “new urbanism” and “sustainable communities” are nothing more than a façade designed to mask the reality of its failure. Peel the first layer of the fancy hotels in South Beach and look beneath the surface and the fallacy of “sustainable communities” clearly manifest itself. Dilapidated buildings and homelessness, not to mention health and social ills are clearly a result of concentrating people into denser populations.

Once you look closely at urban renewal projects, the urbanism movement reveals itself as nothing more than a façade covering its failures in post-card ideals of comfortable life. But what the proponents of the movement ignore, possibly purposely, is that new urbanism takes away from the poor and displaces them even further out of the community’s mainstream further disfranchising them from the comfort of membership in the general community.

Those that argue that denser communities brings lower costs due to lowered transportation requirements and somehow creates a sense of community membership for the good of the village ignore the evidence of the communities that have already tried and failed at urban renewal. The evidence is clear, the displacement of the members that built the quaint postcards that so many in the vertical cities lust for are eventually driven out by the locusts taking over their homes.

Both South Beach and San Francisco have proven to me that new urbanism is a failure, but far more egregious, for me, is that it appears to be designed to serve well-healed silent minorities pulling the strings in re-inventing communities for their delight while taking away from the citizens, like Segundo Barrio in El Paso, who strive to make themselves a better home. El Paso is one of the latest battle-grounds and the battle lines are clearly drawn out between the two antagonists, the poor wishing to make a better life and the weasel proponents conveniently serving hidden masters in their agenda to remake a community into yet another playground to play in.  The question is, who will ultimately prevail, or will, yet another economic displacement happen again?

El Paso attorney Theresa Caballero announced today that she
is running for Judge in Criminal District Court 1 in the upcoming county-wide
elections.

I have recently noticed that AT&T has quietly begun to tack on Early Termination Fees to landlines. As a cell phone user, for many years, I am cognizant of Early Termination Fees by cell phone providers, but it appears that one of AT&T’s reactions to its eroding market share by cell phone and VoIP service providers is to quietly add Early Termination Fees to its landline customers without their active and knowledgeable consent.

One of my company’s core services is to provide managed telecommunications solutions to our customers; as such I have dealt with AT&T and its counterparts by requisitioning telecommunications services from simple, single-line telephone numbers to broadband internet connections. Therefore I have many years of experience dealing with the telecoms and their processes.

I have seen and dealt with the idiosyncrasies of giant conglomerations in Mexico and the United States and especially their monopolistic attitudes in the 80’s and 90’s. What AT&T is doing now is nothing more than a fraud designed to milk as much money as they can from consumers before their monopoly completely erodes and they have to figure out how to make money honestly.

The scam, like all scams, works on people’s busy lives and the concept that if only a few fall for our scam then it lines our pockets.

It starts with the friendly telephone operator happily taking your telephone order constantly trying to upsell you an additional service you really don’t need but hey, it’ll save you money in the long term; “who knows you might need it”. If you insist that you just need a “plain, simple telephone number with no call waiting or long-distance service”, the operator will happily fill your request not once telling you that there will be early termination fees in the future. In fact the term is never mentioned.

As with any scam, the less information you give the customer up-front the less chance they have of starting to price and feature compare, which is where AT&T will always fail.

Then you begin to deal with the monopolistic attitude of a monolith whereby getting a telephone line installed at your office requires that you wait patiently for a four-hour window where the tech might stop by to install the line; “time permitting”. Notice that at no time was the “Early Termination Fee” mentioned.

I know perfectly well that the more complex telecommunication connections such as T1s and cellular service require term contracts and therefore Early Termination Fees are amply spelled out. I have no problem with those because, as an informed consumer, I make an affirmative decision to contract and pay the penalty for moving before the term expires. The key, here, being an affirmative decision to enter into a contract that requires a penalty for cancelling before the term expires.

In terms of landlines, AT&T doesn’t want to clearly spell out Early Termination Fees because then the scam will not work. You see, if you tell the consumer that they need to contract with a pre-determined period of time, then getting a landline is no longer a simple matter, but one of, wait maybe I should shop around a little before I commit.

So how do they get away with it? Obviously there is an upside to this for AT&T, if not why bother. It’s simple; businesses are in transition today, going from the traditional fixed-land line to converting to other providers via cellular or VoIP service for their telecommunications. During this transition businesses are still trying to determine the best course of action. This transition is the reason why AT&T is relying on a scam to shore up their eroding revenues because their infrastructure is unable and their corporate culture is unwilling to compete fairly in the marketplace.

The scam works this way. Sneak in the language of Early Termination Fees buried in pages of legalese and little post cards advising you; “thank you for being a valued customer” and, by the way, we are happily renewing your service for another year, oh and guess what, since we value you as a customer so much, we are letting you know that if you decide to cancel we’ll tack on an Early Termination Fee.

There is no affirmative agreement on your part or consent to accept the Early Termination Fee, but after all it is a scam so why bother with business ethics and fairness? As a business owner you make the move to improving your bottom line and make the switch to another telecommunications provider to be more efficient. Sure you asked AT&T if they could match the price point or even provide the service and they could do neither. So after spending hours jumping from AT&T representative to AT&T representative to make the switch, you finally convince them to cancel your account. The helpful AT&T representative takes the cancellation order and conveniently tells you that you will receive a final bill in the mail.

A few weeks later, it arrives. It conveniently tells you that you are paid up for services rendered since AT&T, like all telecommunication companies, charges you for service BEFORE you actually consume it, but wait, there is a balance due any way. It is a fee for “agreement termination”. Yup, it’s an Early Termination Fee for canceling a landline.

Here is the genius to scam. Most businesses contracted their telephone lines years before and paperwork and the person that contracted the service is probably no longer with the company. And even if they were, it is probably the owner who is too busy with the business day to day operations that recollecting who they spoke to or what they signed is not worth the effort.

But guess what, there is no paper signed by the business that says; “yes, I agree to pay Early Termination Fees”. Most companies would rather pay the outrageous fee rather than face the threat of being referred to an outside collection agency. You see, AT&T is so egregious about their scam that they conveniently mention on their bill that this is your final bill and that “it is IMPORTANT that you pay the final balance no later than the DUE BY date” or there will be consequences.

The scam, like all scams, works on ignorance and therefore AT&T doesn’t want you to take the time to scrutinize the bill, much less think about it. So most companies pay and move on. The fact that some companies choose to pay the scam does not make it right.

The economy and the business world are in a state of ever evolving flux as technology and world-wide economic stresses have made it necessary for businesses to streamline their operations in order to remain relevant in today’s economic climate. Giant conglomerations struggle, like small businesses, but as industry giants their resources mean that they can get away with scams individuals will likely face jail time for.

In the case of AT&T’s landline Early Termination Fee scam, the most likely outcome is that eventually, if ever, they will be faced with a class-action lawsuit where they pay cents on the dollar to settle the case, with the majority of the monies going to attorney fees. The consumers who paid the fees will get no relief and AT&T, even after paying the penalty, if any, will still have benefited from the monies it collected from the scam through increased stock options/prices, interest earned from banked money and “legal fees” deductions on their corporate tax returns.

And, if an enterprising attorney doesn’t decide to pursue a class action lawsuit then the monies collected are banked for AT&T’s shareholder benefits. AT&T benefits from the scam regardless of, and if, they are ever called on it.

Can you do anything about it?

As a realist I know that there is really nothing anyone can do about it. It is the nature for government to perpetuate consumer fraud by ignoring it or paying lip service to it. It doesn’t do government any good to go after the same people that feed it on a daily basis, so it continues. A small business man would likely face jail time for the same fraud, but a giant, like AT&T, will be ignored by government oversight therefore further encouraging them. It is easier to throw an individual, with little resources, in jail rather than to hold a company, like AT&T accountable for the same scam.

The only thing we can do, as consumers, is to call them on their fraud and demand written proof of your company’s “affirmative” agreement to enter into a contract with AT&T whereby your company agreed to pay Early Termination Fees. Absent that, well, would you pay a person that walked up to you and told you; “you owe me $100 for walking on my street”?

That’s exactly what AT&T is telling you when it demands an Early Termination Fee for a land-line you cancelled that doesn’t have a signed contract attached to it. But, as a giant unethical conglomerate, they have the resources to make your life difficult by legal terrorism through threats of lawsuits and referrals to collection agencies.

So, if you decide to embark in this assertion of your rights and correct a wrong, document, document and document everything. More importantly respond to each and every letter you receive and do not engage anyone in a discussion about the merits of your argument. Rather force them to contact you via correspondence in order to properly document your actions.

Like all scammers, documentation is the worst nightmare for the scammer, so once AT&T realizes that you are on to them they will quickly move on to the next victim.