By Steve Ragan Aug 17, 2007, 16:00 GMT
Living out her fifteen minutes of fame, she is gaining attention for her looks as well as her YouTube video; Justine Ezarik has gotten the public’s attention by posting a video about a box. What makes the box important is that it contained her new AT&T phone bill after she bought an iPhone. The bill was three hundred pages long.
The video, set to music with the iPhone theme song, runs just over a minute in length. Already one-hundred seventy thousand people have viewed it. The box arrived last Saturday and inside it contained her first bill after she purchased Apple’s iPhone. The bill was detailed, including the, “time and date down to the second,” for each text message she sent and each call she made. Apparently, the reason for the impressive size of the phone bill is that Ezarik sends about thirty-five thousand text messages a month. She does have the unlimited plan.
AT&T, despite claims that, “Maybe AT&T is just trying to clear a forest behind their building,” on one forum, maintains that the details are apart of the normal billing. Customers can elect, if they wish, to get an electronic bill, or a less detailed paper bill. The original post by Ezarik was to stress to the public to use electronic paper billing, to gain attention to anything else.
AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel insists situations like Ezarik’s are exceptions not the norm. “We're not sending lots of boxed bills to customers,” he says. Adding, “We don't want to presume for the customer that they want detail or don't want detail. That needs to be up to them.” The default for all AT&T customers is a detailed bill, only the customer can request a change.
Rob Enderle, an independent analyst at the Enderle Group, calls the detailed bills stupid. “Not only does it cost AT&T more to do this, it just upsets customers. [It is] bad business,” he said to USA Today. Since Monday, AT&T has faced an onslaught of negative attention to the overuse of paper, Siegel told PC World that as of now the detailed bills are the standard, “That's where things are now, but that's not to say they'll stay that way,” he said. Maybe AT&T will change their ways and go green on the billing cycles.
As for Justine Ezarik, she said in another interview with a local news station that her bill while long was average. There were no hidden or unexpected charges.
Original clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdULhkh6yeA
TV Interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h-jFzQFMLw
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