Why it's easy to hate big companies

On January 14 2019 AT&T unilaterally changed its contracts with people who use its DirectTV, Uverse, AT&T phone, or AT&T Internet services.

Now if you cancel the service you can't get a refund for unused days.  So if you switch to another provider and don't need the AT&T service you'll still be billed for it up until your next billing date.

This is similar to a change that AT&T implemented a while ago which says you pay for your services before they're provided.

While it's true if this sort of thing upsets you, as it should, you could change phone companies which is a huge pain and which just leaves you at the mercy of another mega company. Essentially the big companies can rip you off this way and there's nothing you can do about it which doesn't hurt you more than it hurts them.

The feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness that people feel when they encounter this sort of nastiness by a big company may be a key aspect of why so many Americans hate big business.

In the old days people rarely interacted with really large companies since most of their money was spent on local stores.  While the phone company was a big company it was also a government regulated monopoly that couldn't get away with things that AT&T is getting away with.

How many online contracts and/or end user agreements have you seen where the big company can change the content arbitrarily and unilaterally?

Companies that effectively rip off their customers this way get millions of people to think of those companies the same way they think of DMV.