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California Offers Cellular Bill of Rights
JeremyALogan writes "The Feature has an article about The California Public Utility Commission's approval of the first cellular customer Bill of Rights in the US. The Bill enables consumers to cancel their wireless contracts within 30 days of signing on. It also forces carriers to clearly state their rates as well as critical contract terms in normal size print on their websites (no more fine print). Companies will no longer be able to lump "recovery fees" in with taxes or other government fees on bills." You can imagine the joy with which the cellular companies have meet this prospect. Court challenges will be ensuing soon.
You're giving your cells the right to mitosis? What are you thinking?
Haven't you ever heard of cancer? A modern organism must regulate mitosis more strictly than almost anything else.
I have never worked with SunCom, but there are several legitamite reasons they may not send an itemized bill. (FYI, I've been working in telecom billing a while now).
1. Their system cannot do it. Some telecom billing systems use an external rating/pricing engine to compute charges, and then forward the final (summarized) charges to the billing system for print/mail/track. The actual billing system may have limitations that prevent it from having all the actual calls (I just got through an implementation using one of those, and the result is that the paper bill cannot have detail). Is detail available on the Web? (that is the usual alternative)
2. Wireless is highly competative, and everyone wants to keep their cost down. Every page of print adds cost (both in paper and postage). Some companies that do this offer an option to pay a bit extra to receive the full detail, giving most consumers a lower price by forgoing this (again, check the Web for detail).
3. SunCom may not actually be a wireless provider (as in owning the network), but a reseller or an MVNO. MVNO's have much lighter systems infrastructure which may leave them incapable for a full detailed bill.
I know its easy to hate the phone company, and usually they deserve it, but billing is one of those things that is terribly important and often screwed up, often in spite of efforts by the carrier.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
I hate replying to my own message, but I just checked SunCom's Web site, and under the FAQ for Billing, it says you can get a detailed bill for $2/month. Instead of having all customers pay the extra even if they don't want detail, just the ones that want it pay.
They do seem to require that even if you only want to view online. That probably tells you they cannot seperate what appears online from what gets printed (they must be using a their invoice system for Web presentment).
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Seems from the many "you can manage with landline" comments that the US isn't near to Sweden (and probably other northern Europe countries) in cell-phone usage. Actually, it's not uncommon here that young people skip the "landline" completely and go for cellular instead. Also, many companies are switching from stationary phones to exclusive use of cellular phones for the employees.
Cable is regulated because it is a licensed monopoly (it least it used to be). With the advent of "overbuilders" such as RCN and satellite TV such as DirecTV and Dish Network, perhaps cable should be deregulated. You do make the very valid point that cable is far from a critical service, so let the free market work its magic.
I'm always frustrated that somehow these existing laws somehow don't apply to the cell phone companies as well.
The problem is that these are often considered to be national services, putting them out of reach in some ways for state PUC/PSC. This is a similar argument made in support of VOIP. The FCC, obviously, has jurisdiction. Let's say I live in one state, on the state line, so my mobile service is coming from another state. Who has jurisdiction?
With that said, the PUC is applying many things to mobile carriers. They have been required to support 911 (they didn't used to be). Mobile carriers are looking more and more like traditional carriers, and they can expect to get the same regulatory treatment in the future.
If I go to a regular store to purchase anything, the store is required to disclose fees up front
Thats not entirely accurate. As someone who travels alot, let me tell you, taxes and what they apply to are not clear until you check out. Take the example of a newspaper: in some places its taxed, others not; if it is, the tax rates are different. I can usually just pull out a dollar for a WSJ, but not always. Taxes, fees, and surcharges are generally not disclosed in any industry until time or sale or invoicing (also see: buying a car, closing a mortgage, buying a plane ticket).
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
The problem is that the consumer is rarely in a position to negotiate a contract. It's take it or leave it. Go to the competition, if any, and you find that the objectionable parts of the contract are considered "standard industry practices", and are present in everyone's contract. That's why we have truth in lending laws, lemon laws, warranty laws and other laws that impose standards on the marketplace.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Talk about demonizing GSM. Do you have anything to support the idea that phone were freely interchangable between carriers before GSM, because it seems to me they have *always* been locked when they came from the provider.
This is where the rift between the US and the rest of the world occurs. Elsewhere in the world, after the cellular company recovered their costs and made some profit they would gladly unlock the handset so you could take it to another carrier if you wished. In the US, this was almost unheard of. In fact, try asking anyone at a retail store about getting this done and 99.99% of the time they'll say it can't be done.
Since Europe has been GSM longer than the U.S., wouldn't Euopean's cell phones be locked to carrier, too? GSM seems to be responsible for this according to you. T-Mobile will unlock your phone if you've been a customer for at least six months, according to many posters in past artcles on this issue.
Before all of this mess, when you could take your phone to any carrier, the phones were of higher quality because they weren't meant to get thrown away.
And you're blaming the cell phone carriers for this? This is the handset manufacturer's fault. They have stated (at least I saw a quote of Sony-Ericsson) that they want people to be buying a new handset once a year.
Don't forget that all of these re-usable handsets winding up in the trash are bad for the environment. I don't see the environmentalists raising a stink about that, I wonder why?
Because you can take you phone/batteries ect and...
1) Donate them to programs that refirbish the phone and give them to victims of domestic abuse for use in emergencies?
2) or take them to Best Buy and drop them in that big bin labeled "Cell Phone/Battery Recycling"?
The term CDMA in the US usually refers to IS-95, different versions of which are called cdmaOne and CDMA2000. These have nothing to do with UMTS. Further, while one of the technologies available to UMTS operators is "code division multiple access", UMTS actually allows operators to chose between several different systems, including time division based systems.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
As someone who travels alot, let me tell you, taxes and what they apply to are not clear until you check out.
Taxes and fees are totally different things. The mobile phone industry regularly makes up fees which they deceptively name so that consumers believe that they are some kind of government-imposed tax. For example, T-Mobile has a "Regulatory Programs Fee" of $.86 per month. Nextel subscribers pay $1.55 a month for "Federal-Programs Cost Recovery." Other Nextel fees include a "Federal TRS Charge" and "State-Gross Receipts Recovery." Not one of those fees represents a federal, state, or local tax. No governmental agency required, or even approved, the collection of any of those fees.
If you are on business travel and you are charged a "tax" of 7.5% on your hotel room, it's because the state and/or local government requires it. If the hotel makes up a fictitious "tax", they can face criminal prosecution. If you want to know what the tax rates are, you can call state agencies and verify that you are being charged appropriately. That's a far cry from the mobile phone industry which simply makes up fees to fatten their wallets.
But you don't have to have a contract. If you do, it's cheaper, but you can go month-to-month. Catch is, you have to pay full price for your handset. Currently, the cellular companies subsidize the cost of the handset, and need the one-year-contract to ensure that they'll earn enough on you to cover the cost of the subsidy as well as the admin costs of bringing you online, the commission to the salesman (if you got service through one of their stores) or the commission of the third party (if you bought service through Ed's Cellular Hut). If you show up with your own handset (bought off eBay, or wherever), they'll be happy to activate it for you, no contract required.
The problem is that there are only a handful of these companies and competition is tight; they all have to use such deceptive practices because of competition. As soon as one company does it, the others all have to if they want to compete with them.
Suppose your business is the next one the government decides it needs to regulate?
Deceptive practices reduce consumer trust for every company in that market. I myself would have gotten a cell phone a lot sooner if I wasn't so leery of these shady tactics -- and that's a loss to both me and my provider.