AT&T hitting business customers with rollover contracts

RIP-OFF ALERT: AT&T is adopting a practice common among the sleaziest contract health clubs and burglar alarm monitoring companies — rollover provisions in their contracts.

When you sign up for a service, sometimes there will be a clause buried in the contract that states if you do not give written notification of intent to cancel during a certain window of time, you are automatically obligated for a new contract period. That’s called rollover.

Now The Orlando Sentinel reports that AT&T is doing this to business customers that sign up for phone and Internet service. It is not, at this time, being done to residential customers.

In Florida alone in a single year, the state received 2,500 complaints about rollover being used by businesses of all types. That’s more than double year over year.

Here’s what you need to know: When a contract is put under your nose with page after page of mice type, you should know right away that’s not a company you want to do business with anyway. And again, to reiterate, never sign a contract for monitoring with a burglar alarm company or with a health club.