Juan Monroy

Today, AT&T sent me an email about setting up a meeting with a “trained representative” to learn about how to “Empower” my smartphone. At first I was going to delete the message, but after reading it, I was intrigued by the offer. For one thing, it originated from some regional manager. I guess that small bit of personalization worked for me to have a look at the message.

It read as follows:

As a special thank you for meeting with us, I authorized 1000 Free Rollover® minutes at no charge*.

We’ll share with you some simple tips, tricks and free apps that will help you get more out of your phone than ever before, such as:

• The simple settings changes that can deliver big improvements to battery life
• How to use Wi-Fi® networks to maximize your data speeds and save you money
• How AT&T can help you to check and pay bill balances, monitor voice and data usage, and report network problems on the go
• How to customize application-specific “Alerts” to only provide the updates you really care about
• And much more!

So if I’m reading this right, it looks like a lot of what they’re going to show me is using less data, especially with the second point so I can use more WiFi. Also, they want to show me other ways so that I don’t get surprised with overages once they finally cancel everyone’s grandfathered unlimited plan, that sweet but kinda useless unlimited iPhone data plan, and replace them with metered plans.

I might actually take advantage of the meeting. Sure, voice minutes are almost a worthless currency these days, but 1,000 free rollover minutes is a nice nugget.