T-Mobile and Sprint didn't even get nominated for the Consumerist's Worst Company in America tournament this year. AT&T and Verizon both were nominated -- AT&T went all the way to the "Elite Eight" before being defeated by 2-time Tournament Champion EA.

Obviously unscientific, but the contestants were nominated and voted on by disgruntled consumers, so they are representative of "how bad" these companies are.

From a "who's best?" standpoint, in 2012 Consumer Reports ranked the majors in order: Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. A JD Power report based on "network quality" also put Verizon at the top of the list in most regions. As far as I can tell, the Power report doesn't reflect overall satisfaction, just voice and data performance.

Spectrum auctions that favor the incumbent players in the market (who have the money to "invest" in Congressmen and the FCC) aren't exactly "arbitrary". There's another auction coming up just now, Google "spectrum auctions" to see how Congress, interest groups of various types, carriers, wanna-be carriers, and the FCC are invested in the process. A little tedious, but interesting how these things get done.

(I post with the assumption you are in the US. If not, US tipping practices do not apply, and your local custom may differ, so my comment will likewise not apply.)

Please tell me that you leave an "acceptable" tip for "acceptable" service, and you're not that guy who goes out with his co-workers and stiffs the waiter, leaving everyone else to subsidize you just out of embarrassment. (That's also usually the guy who tries to get the whole table on a single check, so he can chip in just the price of his entree, rounded down. Not the beverage, not his portion of anything he shared, like the cheesy-potato-finger-burrito-fries appetizer. Not the tax. And certainly not the tip. "That service was not excellent".)

Or the retiree who "never left more than a 10% tip, and I'm not gonna give one to these freeloading entitled kids now!"

Perhaps our lawyers should have a talk with AT&T's legal office.

On second thought, a single lawyer would probably be hopelessly outgunned against a team of lawyers who themselves wrote the loophole for the law. And the legal costs just to recover $0.61/month would be prohibitive, to say the least.

No, a class action is the only way to go.

Except for the "no class action" clause in the AT&T's contract.

Well, we're screwed, then.

I guess the only remaining argument for getting a contract-plan for wireless service -- stable pricing for the duration of the contract -- just disappeared.

Now let's just hope that the no-contract month-to-month plans don't disappear.

I might just try that . . .

"Honey, if you let me buy that Tesla, we can use it for backup electricity when the power goes out!"

My grandparents moved out to "the country" in 1940, building a house on a small corner of the then-rented-out family farm. Before they got city water, they had a well, which they maintained after going municipal. Additionally, they had what appeared to be a decorative antique Red Jacket hand operated pump over the well. The pump was, in fact, functional -- provided you already had a gallon or two of water to prime it. As a child, it was big time fun to pump and haul gallons of water to irrigate my grandmother's roses. They allowed me my amusement, despite the fact that my efforts were utterly unnecessary. A water line ran below the frost line from the house to the rose beds for that purpose.

I don't believe they had the functional hand pump in case of power outage, it just remained there from before electrification, and these were people who never decommissioned something that still worked. They "endured" the Great Depression, after all. "Witnessed from a comfortable vantage point," is more like it. Where was I? Oh yeah, even after getting the municipal water they kept the electric well pump and could cut the house over to well water if needed -- a situation that I don't believe ever arose. They had a backup for the backup, even though their most likely course of action in an outage would have been to drive to a hotel in town or stay with friends.

Wouldn't an even better idea be the "Westworld" gun? The one that only shoots bad guys? What could possibly go wrong?

I assume that if you had such a system, you'd "key" it to everyone in the home that you trusted with the weapon. The same idea as giving your whole family their own set of housekeys.

Is that working out as well for you as my one-man air-travel boycott is for me?

A place with all that probably has the free soda and snacks, too.

I'd rather have a jet pack. But if the boss is cutting the free soda, we're both gonna be disappointed.

I always wanted a hovercraft in the future, but I was too lazy to learn Esperanto.

Hovercraft? Hovercrafts? Hmm.

"Dear sir. I would like to order your Lone Star Hovercraft, plus another Lone Star hovercraft".

Awesome. I wish I could use the phrase "my old NeXT cube" in a sentence . . . I mean other than that sentence.

I don't think I'm really irresponsible for my "30-days with no food, water or services plan" to be, for example, "decamp to the in-laws' house one state away". A week or so, we could ride out, but when you're talking no power, water or even food and basic necessities in the stores for a month, it's time to evacuate for a while. Keeping at least one car's fuel tank full is pretty much my long-term disaster plan.