DSL Surcharge Plan Abandoned by Major Carriers

thedletterman writes to mention a USAToday article about the proposed surcharges on DSL lines. The FCC stepped in just as major carriers Verizon and BellSouth made moves to add a $1-$3 surcharge to their DSL services; they were coincidentally to add this charge just as the Universal Service Fund fee was being removed from all DSL services. From the article: "Verizon, in a statement, said it was dropping the new fee as a result of feedback from consumers: 'We have listened to our customers, and are eliminating the charge.' Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union had another explanation: 'They got caught red-handed in a blatant consumer rip-off. Only under the pressure of regulators cracking down on them did they back off from this unwarranted charge.' The FCC last week sent Verizon a 'letter of inquiry,' the first step in a formal investigation."

Comments

Say what?

[tomstdenis]

They wanted to add a charge under the guise of some FCC fee after the fee was eliminated?

Sounds about right. Who's the terrorist now?

Tom

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They wanted to add a charge under the guise of some FCC fee after the fee was eliminated?
 
It wasn't going to be "under the guise of some FCC fee" at all. That would be one step above their backhanded methods to an outright fraud that would have probably gotten someone some jailtime.
 
  Who's the terrorist now?
 
In what fashion? Please, if you're one of the people who thinks that the term is thrown around way too much now don't start being a hypocrite and thinking it's cute. It's simply not.
 
I hate to defend Verizon in light of this news article and I think there is a lot of crap that goes on in the name of better telecommunications that is simply hype. Despite all of this, in the face of the cable industry and their "phoney" ad campaign, Verizon is a fairly honorable company compared to their competition. In a system where we have little choices to be made in the case of broadband internet providers Verizon is probably one of the best companies that I know of. Certainly a sight better than Comcast and their incompetence or their outright lies.

Re:Say what?

[Fyre2012]

Only under the pressure of regulators cracking down on them did they back off from this unwarranted charge

Proof positive that giant companies will do whatever they want until forced otherwise.

Re:Say what?

[Ucklak]

I'm almost beginning to believe that a nationally run telecommunications monopoly may be a better thing after all.

Um, no.

I remmeber AT&T as king dog and I also remeber phone leases and elevated long distance calls.
In the 70s, a phone lease was about $5 a month and a one time purchase of about $70- you never owned the phone you used, kinda like the cable box or satellite receiver is now.
In state long distance for my state started at 12cents a minute past 40 miles from the center of town and went up from there. Out of state calls were $.35 a minute - I still have a phone book from the 70s with the rates published.

Keep in mind that in the mid 70s, movies were $.75 for a matinee and $3.00 for evening rates. I was a kid and paid $1.25 to see Star Wars.

Darn

[jayhawk88]

Now they're going to have to wait 6 whole months and spend 10 whole minutes coming up with another lame-ass random fee to tack onto your bill!

Listened to their customers?

[End Program]

If they really wanted to appease their customers, why don't they drop cost of DSL to $4.99 /month? I am sure a few of their 'customers' are calling for lower rates.

Listening to the customers and dropping the charge

[Danga]

Riiigggght... more like they got busted attempting a money grab and are taking the charge away to save face. I mean what do they think there really are customers who like paying 10,000 extra little fees on top of the advertised "$29.99" or whatever per month. If they really wanted to listen to the customers then they would get rid of all of the additional fees that customers have gotten used to as well.

How many people here hate getting a phone bill and while you signed up for some great deal such as $29.99/month the real charge with all of the extra hidden fees is more like $39.99? That pisses me off to no end and I wish they would eliminate doing that completely but I know the chances of that ever happening are nil.

They'd be better off to admit the attempted fleece

[The_REAL_DZA]

because once their customers get the idea the companies are actually listening to them there's going to start hearing a lot of complaining.

This logic is sadly familiar

[The Monster]

It seems like every time there's an election, there's a referendum on one tax or another. There is a particularly nasty trick that the tax advocates play:
Year X: This tax is temporary, only for Y years.
Year X+Y: This isn't really a tax increase, because it replaces the tax passed in Year X. Your tax bill isn't going to go up if this passes.

Of course, it's usually a different group saying these two things, so that the lie isn't as blatant.

The regulated monopolies are so in bed with the government that they start to think the same way.

Re:Moo

[gfxguy]

I agree - the free market is great when it's actually free. When there's collusion (price fixing), then I can support government intervention.

Re:Moo

[TheCarp]

I don't know about stupidly passive. I think its easy to say that but... I think Scott Adams of Dilbert Fame had it right in one of his books (I believe it was "The Dilbert Princible")... the world is far too complex to be smart all the time.

I mean ok... the DSL provider just switched around a couple of fees. One no longer being recovered, one new one to line their own pockets.

The difference is minor... probably about what I spend on my morning coffee. However thats one bill, from one service provider. Take my situation... I pay electric, gas, cell phone, cable, a mortgage, collect rent, collect 4/5 of the bill money from my roomates, water bill, house insurance.

Theres alot of room in there for a change to just go unnoticed, because I also work 40 hours, study martial arts, and try to have a social life, including seeing my friends and dating. Never mind spending some time here and there with the family.

Um... believe it or not, I don't have that much time to spend pouring over each and every line item on each and every bill. In fact, if it wasn't for gnucash, I might not have a clue as to what my finances really looked like overall.

So yah, I could easily get extra fees tacked on and not notice. Does that make me stupidly passive? I don't think its that so much as overly active. My time is spread pretty thin sometimes. I think that is true of alot of people.

-Steve

Re:Moo

[ppz003]

Traditionally, i'm against government stepping in. I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities. But with consumer's getting more stupidly passive, and companies more ingeniously aggressive, i'm left without a force to join, and the companies, who as a result of frequent changeover and short-termed decisions, never think of the customers as more than a quick way to make money, we need a government body stepping in.

We are no longer practising Capitalism. This is more of a MoneyGrabism.

Unfortunately, the more we rely on the government to protect us, the lazier people will get thus perpetuating the need for laws and regulations. The only way to not need so much regulation is to educate the people to start participating in the free market.

Modern life = too complicated for that

[dal20402]

educate the people to start participating in the free market

Hmmm, let's see. To run my daily life I deal with...

• three major credit card companies
• three major national banks
• two giant telecommunications companies
• two insurance companies
• one power monopoly
• one large property-management company
• one federal government (student loan) bureaucracy
• one auto company
• 2 city, 1 county, and 1 state government
• and the usual mix of consumer retailers and manufacturers.

So what I need to do is drop my life's plans and ambitions (to say nothing of my job) in order to spend years learning about every little detail of each of these businesses or regulatory entities. Even if I do that, I will still have less knowledge about any one of them than any of the thousands of professional staff who have spent their careers learning the details.

Face it. There is no way even the smartest, most willing-to-learn consumer can prevent himself/herself from being at an information disadvantage in modern society. If the consumer actually wants to live a life instead of constantly learning about uninteresting subjects, the information disadvantage will be worse. If we want to take advantage of the possibilities modern technology and finance offer us, we need to protect the consumer -- not because he/she is "lazy" but because it's *impossible* for him/her to learn all the details.

There are now only two alternatives to regulation, as imperfect a tool as it is:
1. large companies and government bureaucracies that are able to screw consumers at will thanks to superior knowledge, or
2. reverting to a world simple enough for everyone to know all the details... uh, no thanks, I like having cars, computers, electricity, and plentiful food.

Re:Moo

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Traditionally, i'm against government stepping in. I'm a firm believer that the market should (and will) regulate itself, only requiring laws breaking monopolies on limited necessities.

Hello? The government already stepped in and created the monopolies that the telcos enjoy. If it weren't for their so-called "natural" monopoly on the cable plant, they would not be able to get away with 94.32% of the bullshit they do today.

Anyone who talks about the local telecommunications markets as if they were anything even remotely resembling free markets has their head up some lobbyist's ass. At least the members of congress have the sense to get paid for sticking their heads up there, I'm not sure why anyone else does it.

Re:When did this kind of thing start?

[puto]

Walt Disney was crazy.
John Delorean, cocaine rebate in trunk.
The Kennedys bootleggers
Senator McCarthy
J Edgar Hoover

I could go with lists of politications and business owners over the years who were theives and thugs, are just crazy in general.

Nothing new, just better press, and people are starting to question a bit more.

We sweep less under the rug now.

Puto

Re:Moo

[tinkerghost]

Actually, chances are pretty good he would be arrested. Phone service is extremely regulated - more to keep new people out than to actually control the people already in.
Office parks and MSB are all corperations controlling the buildings that are being wired. As such they are in effect wiring their own property. Also most MSB's actually don't own the PBX, the TelCo just installs one there for convienence. If he were to wire his own house with an Asterisk server - no problems, but reselling that service outside his house is likely to get him in trouble.

Cost increase OK, "Fees" are not

[Kadin2048]

Or... just raise the base price of the service by $2.70.

And you know what? That would be totally acceptable.

Raising your rates is one thing -- that's just business. It may cost you customers, but it's all part of the value proposition.

But trying to tack on an unadvertised "fee" that's not really a 'fee' at all, but which somehow you don't advertise as being part of the price of service, that's getting pretty close to misrepresentation in my book.

Even if all the FCC action did was cause Verizon to take their $2.99 fee and move it from a line-item "Compliance Fee" to part of the base cost of DSL service, that would be a Good Thing, because it would make it harder for them to advertise a price for service that wasn't true.

IMO, it's unethical and false advertising for them to advertise a price that doesn't include everything except federally mandated fees which are not kept by the company (e.g. sales tax). If it's not going directly to the government, it's not a 'fee,' and it should be included into their advertised rates. If that makes them less competitive, so be it.

These 'Regulatory Compliance Fees' have got to go; they're misleading to consumers and they make it difficult to make a fair comparison of the costs of service between different companies (i.e. cable and DSL, or cellular and landlines).