Slashdot Mirror
Telcom Fraud: The Previous Generation
theodp writes "Remember back in the day when telcom firms were charged with simple, good old-fashioned consumer fraud? AT&T and Lucent got a history lesson Friday, agreeing to a $300 million settlement related to claims that they used confusing billing statements to mislead consumers into paying lease charges for their home telephones, including the timeless rotary Traditional, that totaled many times more than the actual value of the phones."
> Anybody who doesn't read their bill before paying it is a jackass anyway. I look over my credit card bill every time...same for phone bill just to make sure. I've had to call the phone company a couple of times because of calls that I know were not made, and they dropped them from the bill.
Good advice, but useless in this case.
Gramps calls the phone company and says "What's this lease charge?" and the droid on the other end reads back the answer from the script: "Well, sir, you lease the phone from us, and if it breaks, we send you a new phone. You have to keep paying or you can't use that phone. You could buy a new phone - we have the FooBlitzkyCompuDyne 12000E for $129.99. Oh, you'd prefer to continue leasing? No problem, sir, thank you for bending over for Ma Bell and her strap-on!"
A more modern example:
- Charges for Network Access for Interstate Calling, Imposed by FCC -- which isn't quite true. They're imposed by the FCC, but the phone company can charge whatever the fuck it wants and keep the profit.
- Federal Universal Service fee
- State high cost fund surcharge
- State teleconnect fund surcharge
- Universal Lifeline Telephone Service Surcharge
- Rate Surcharge
- State Regulatory Fee
- State TDD Relay Service Fee
- Tax (!) federal and state
So - my local phone bill is about 50% higher with all these fees than it would be without 'em.
Then there's the...
- Carrier Universal Service Charge (which all the LD carriers just jacked up within a month of each other. Price-fixing, anyone? This is another "FCC" charge - that phone companies can charge any amount they want and skim the profit from before remitting the FCC's cut)
- Single Bill Fee (Fair enough, that's my fault, but why should I pay $1.50 for less paperwork on my part and theirs?)
- Carrier property tax
- LD Calling Plan Monthly Charge (Is it a charge? Or is it a use-it-or-lose-it? It started out as use-it-or-lose-it, then they changed it to a charge for the hell of it. My fault for sticking with 'em. But any other telco would do the same thing.)
- City utility tax
- Federal tax
- State and local (as opposed to city?!) tax
Now - you tell me - which of these fees are real and which are fodder for future class-action lawsuits? You think I can trust the accounting from which those numbers are derived? (You think anyon is ever gonna be able to figure out a telco's billing structure to determine the legit charges from the frauds?)
Fuck the telcos. Every last one of 'em. I hope they all crash and burn in an avalanche of debt. Every last one of 'em. It'll suck for a month, but maybe someone who isn't a con artist at heart will relight the fiber.
The guy who paid $4/month to keep his rotary service even though he was the last guy in the exchange to use it? Thank you, you're an inspiration to us all. Nice to see one of us being able to gouge the motherf00ckers back for once. (I'm calling my assnozzle telco and asking 'em if I can get rotary tomorrow. The look on the face of the front-line drone when it hears the question might make me want to buy a video phone :-)