This one takes the cake.
Scratch that. This one takes the minutes. Your unused calling card minutes, that is.
I have no adjectives to describe how this makes me feel. But visions of plantations and Communist Russia come to mind.
Washington, D.C. is suing AT&T because some customers who buy its prepaid calling cards don’t always use up all the minutes. The city isn’t suing on behalf of the customers, of course (though even that would be sort of silly). It’s suing on the notion that when a customer doesn’t use up all of a product or service they purchase, the remainder belongs to the government. So they want the company to pay what the minutes are worth to the D.C. government, where they might be better used on, oh I don’t know, maybe to pay overtime for Mayor Adrian Fenty’s mountain bike detail.
Next up, D.C. sues Burger King for stray fries that go uneaten after falling to the bottom of the drive-thru bag.
Since when does buying anything and not using it all up constitute anything more than perhaps wastefulness on the part of the consumer? It’s not as if the government is loaning our purchases to us with some caveat we are to return any unused portion.
Someone needs to be slapped soundly upside the head.