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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."
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
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Veriz0wn3d!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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!
The FCC stepping up to actually protect consumers? Guess the Telcos need to buy off some more commissioners...
Dear Valued Verizon Online Customer,
Effective August 14, 2006, Verizon Online will stop charging the FUSF (Federal Universal Service Fund) recovery fee. We will stop being assessed the fee by our DSL network suppliers. Therefore, we will no longer be recovering this fee from our customers. The impact of the FUSF fee is as follows: for customers of Verizon Online with service up to 768Kbps, the fee eliminated is $1.25 a month; for customers of Verizon Online with service up to 1.5 Mbps or 3Mbps, the fee eliminated is $2.83 a month (based on current FUSF surcharge amounts). On your bill that includes charges for August 14, 2006 you will see either a partial FUSF Recovery Fee or no FUSF line item at all, depending on your bill cycle.
Starting August 26, 2006, Verizon Online will begin charging a Supplier Surcharge for all new DSL customers, existing customers with a DSL monthly or bundle package, and existing DSL annual plan customers at the time their current annual plan expires. This surcharge is not a government imposed fee or a tax; however, it is intended to help offset costs we incur from our network supplier in providing Verizon Online DSL service. The Supplier Surcharge will initially be set at $1.20 a month for Verizon Online DSL customers with service up to 768Kbps and $2.70 per month for customers with DSL service at higher speeds.
On balance your total bill will remain about the same as it has been or slightly lower.
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.
Have you read my journal today?
"we have listened to our customers, and are eliminating the charge."
I want to live in Verison world, where unless people tell you otherwise, they want to be ripped off.
I just can't comprehend how fucked up corporations are.
These "service charges" should be illegal as they stand today. Many Canadian cellular carriers use this very same practise. There was some sort of meeting between the heads of the carrier families where they all agreed to introduce a "government licensing fee" or "federal satellite licensing fee" of $6.95 per month. This went on for years. The government finally perked up and said "Hey, we don't charge that licensing fee" and demanded the charge to be dropped (though not refunded, naturally). The carriers eagerly complied by renaming it a "system access fee", and it is still in place today.
These fees are nothing but a vehicle for false advertising and a covert way to increase prices unannounced. Carriers can legally advertise a plan to be $20 per month when in fact it is $26.95. Thus, no carrier can afford to be honest or they will appear to be the most expensive service.
Hello, legislation?
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.
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.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
because once their customers get the idea the companies are actually listening to them there's going to start hearing a lot of complaining.
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This is the website from Kimmelman's team, has a bunch of info on the press release and the fees.
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.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Didn't you study economics? Costs such as this used to be called "The cost of doing business". In today's modern economy however it is now known as "Sticking it to you as hard as we can and you can't do shit about it".
I look forward to seeing on my bill:
$5 Gas for installation truck fee
$10 Catered lunch for marketing dept fee
$20 Lack of alternatives in the market fee
$3 Sending you this abusive letter fee
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'm dropping Verizon land line service in favor of VOIP in a week or so. I got an expensive collect call charged to my bill last month, a call I never accepted, and the date/time stamp showed it supposed ocurred when I was at work (and I live alone). Verizon's response was "Oh, we just poass those charges from the original collect call company." Contacting the other company produced nothing, and a quick online investigation shows that they are the source of many phone line scams.
Fuck you, Verizon. By passing on the charges and doing NOTHING for your customers, you are an enabler, and just as guilty as the other company. Fuck you, fuck the cocksucking MBAs who made you what you are, and kiss my lilly white ass.
The American DSL monopolies are very unfortunate and entirely avoidable. In Toronto, Canada, there are over 160 ISPs in addition to the major ones, and 56 of those are DSL. The mom and pop DSL ISPs are just as fast as the big boys (at 3.0Mb, though we have a cable internet monopoly and that network offers at least 6.0Mb for a similar price) but the little guys are cheaper and more flexible. For instance, little ISPs tend to have no monthly transfer caps, allow you to buy your own modem instead of renting, allow you to run servers, don't throttle Usenet or common P2P ports, etc. Plus, due to all the competition, the little guys work their asses off to keep their fickle customers on board. Competition is a great thing!
This is one of the things I like about Road Runner.
I was quoted $44.95/month.
My bill is $44.95/month.
See the connection? No fees, no taxes, no charges besides the $44.95/month. The service is pretty good, too.
Now, before someone suggests that I look at my cable bill for the hidden fees, or asks about what I pay for my cable service, I think I should point out that I do not subscribe to cable (I get my TV fix through Dish Network). It is not well known, but you can unbundle Road Runner from TW Cable TV, and I have done so. When you do so, you will pay exactly $44.95/month for the middle-tier Road Runner residential service, and not a cent more.
www.wavefront-av.com
If they had been paying off their politicians correctly and on-time, this would never have happened. Shame on you telecom companies. I hope you've learned your lessons.
I'm tired of companies that offer a contract with a set price only to change the price arbitrarily with "surcharges." The odds are completely in the companies favor. They have a customer locked into a mult-year contract with a certain minimum price but the company can raise prices on a whim with "surcharges." If they can do that why can't I add in my own "surcredits?"
I recently dropped my garbage collection company because of surcharges. I've really respect companies that charge me ONE price per month with no lengthy contract (Time Warner is the ONLY example I can think of). I really don't care what factors into some companies cost of doing business. I don't care how much gas costs Waste Management and I don't want to see it on my bill.
There\'s no place like ~
An extremely simple regulatory fix is really all that's necessary -- require the advertised or quoted price for any good or service to be inclusive of any and all fees, regardless of origin, including the maximum possible sales tax payable in the region advertised.
Advertised prices would then actually represent what you'd pay (or even less, if for some reason your area had a lower sales tax than the maximum), and businesses wouldn't be able to raise prices without raising prices.
They jacked up the "Regulatory Compliance Fee" (i.e. we want you to think this is a tax, but is just gravy for us fee) from $2.24 to $4.16.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Damned Federal Regulators! Just once I'd like to see a Liberitarian Administration in power that would once-and-for-all allow our precious Corporations the Freedom to conduct their business without the constant threat of Federal Regulators stepping in.
Then we'd see an Internet where I could watch Home Shopping Network in High Definition Video without having to worry that all the pipes will get filled-up by miscreants making free phone calls over the Internet, or posting to their silly little left wing communist hippie blogs.
How come slashdot still doesn't support the <SARCASM> tag?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
educate the people to start participating in the free market
Hmmm, let's see. To run my daily life I deal with...
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.
Phone companies will quite frequently attempt to pass off certain charges to the consumer through "fees." For example, the Universal Service Fee is a payment from you that goes directly to the FCC for the Universal Service Fund, the fund that pays for eRate, the government subsidization program that helps fund schools' telecommunication access (POTS, internet, long-distance, equipment to keep it all in order). The same thing is done with 911 access. The government bills the providers, and the providers just pass the bill onto consumers.
When our school switched over from AT&T to a regional long-distance provider, the rep at the regional company gave me a little insight to AT&T's various "fees." Ever take a look at the "FCC Line Charge"? According to AT&T (requires flash, and you'll need to zoom in to read the thing), it is an "FCC-approved flat-rate monthly charge paid by consumers to their Local Telephone Company so that the Local Telephone Company can recover the costs, not recovered in local rates, that are associated with connecting customers to the long distance network." Now don't you love how that works? They can advertise that their phone line only costs $18 a month, then hit you up for another $11 to cover costs that are "not recovered in local rates." And how about the "Carrier Cost Recovery Fee?" AT&T just doesn't want to have to pay their own property taxes, so they pass the cost onto consumers. I was told by the rep that AT&T has been known to pass whatever fees it can to the consumer, whatever can be FCC and state approved. Even approved "expansion fees" can be funneled into paying for new office buildings that "house infrastructure."
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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Believe you me, they WILL continue to get the income from it one way or another. As a DSL provider myself, our circuit costs mysteriously went up 1 month before the FUSF fee was eliminated. FUSF has ALWAYS been nothing more than a slush fund for the telcos anyway. Which in and of itself is why they wanted to replace it with a service fee.
Because people keep using the telcos for things like this (money speaks louder than words with corperations) very few independant ISPs have the power to do anything about it. Look at it, Earthlink couldn't stop it, Covad couldn't stop it, and I know I sure couldn't have stopped it. If people quit using telcos for their DSL and went to the independant ISP we could actually fight stuff like this on capitol hill.
There's no sense in rehashing all this yet again so....'nough said
I'm working on bringing utilities to a new construction building in Maryland (around DC). While they do not have fiber (Fios) at the location right now, I was told by the Fiber Service Group for Verizon that if you request fiber to be installed they will do so at no additional cost (typical $80 dollar install fees, of course). They will also supply the converters to translate the digital signal to analog, essentially replacing whatever trunk line they would have put in (in my case, two 25-pair cables backbone cables). When they finally get Fiber into your particular area, you are already set up and ready for it.
Of course, that's only helpful if you're building a new house/building.
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).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually, i'm a bit more harsh than that. If there is collusion, just don't buy the product. If it is a necessity, start your own business and charge less. (I think that works at least theoretically, and should be pursued before jumping to regulation.)
In general I agree but not for landlines, whether copper or fiber. The local governments grant a natural monopoly to the companies that laydown the cable or fiber, I've never heard of someone else being able to laydown cable or fiber alongside what was already there, so there is no competition. You could go wireless but the FCC tightly controls the airwaves. And the standards they use date from 1934, hope I got the year right. But with the technology available now these regulations are wait out of date, and that's just how mass media wants to keep it. Check out those who want to operate their own radio stations, "pirate radio". If the FCC were to open up the airwaves there'd be much more competition.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm loving the fact that my city council (in Utah) voted in the affirmative to support the Utopia network here. I use the service at work, and am awaiting the install to my residence right now. Many other cities were lobbied successfully by Comcast and Qwest to vote the initiative down, and are now wishing they had not fallen for the lies!
..."
Over the Utopia network, residential customers can get a 15meg SYNCHRONOUS line with static IP for $40/month. Business customers can get a 30meg synchronous line for about $125 (depending on bundling with VoIP and promotions). There are currently four ISPs offering internet service on the Utopia network, so you also get to take your pick. It's a WONDERFUL system to have in the area, even though they're not finished deploying some segments of the involved cities, and still working some of the kinks out. I hope other cities in the nation are successful in emulating it, and that they will likewise not be bought or talked out of it by the incumbent providers.
As a sidenote, the presence of fiber-to-the-home in my area has helped keep comcast and qwest in check. I can get Comcast's highest-speed cable modem in my area for about $20/month as long as I happen to mention that "i'm considering this new fiber-optic thingy I heard about in my neighborhood