Customer Asks For Itemized Bill, Verizon Tells Her To Get a Subpoena

suraj.sun writes with this quote from an article at Techdirt: "A woman, who called Verizon to try to find out about the $4.19 she was being charged for six local calls, was told by Verizon reps that the only way it would provide her an itemized bill was to get a lawyer and have the lawyer get a subpoena to force Verizon to disclose the information. Instead, the woman went to court (by herself) and a judge told Verizon (.docx) to hand over the itemized bill info. 'It is a basic matter of fair business practice that a consumer should be able to contact a utility about a charge on a bill and learn what the charge is for and learn that the charge was correctly applied. The only verification that Verizon's witness could offer that a charge like [the customer's] $4.19 measured use charge was accurate and billed correctly was her faith in the accuracy of Verizon's computer system. The only way that Verizon would offer any information about a past charge in response to a consumer inquiry was to require that customer to hire a lawyer and subpoena their own usage information. By no reasonable standard could this be considered reasonable customer service."

Comments

Can we get this judge...

[houstonbofh]

Can we get this judge to look into medical billing too? It is the only place worse than cell phone billing, and not by much. Both are worse than used cars sales...

Re:Can we get this judge...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a physician and I couldn't figure out what the charges meant on my last hospital bill. Turns out the hospital couldn't either. They had to drop the charges. This sort of thing happens all of the time and I'm constantly telling patients to look at their bills and appeal things that don't make sense. Ah, American medicine. The best there is ....

Re:Can we get this judge...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that insurance companies don't always want you to know either.

That's my experience too, and it's the part that baffles me. Does anyone know why? I would have thought they had a vested interest in reducing costs, but maybe they don't? Is it because they just scale premiums with cost? Does their profit increase as costs increase? If they encourage cost increase for that reason, then that is downright evil. Somewhere between Saruman and Sauron-level on the sinister scale.

I went to my primary care physician (tvc.org) recently to have him spray a little liquid nitrogen on a wart on my foot. It took the family doctor a grand total of 5 minutes, most of which was friendly chit-chat. My insurance (Empire Blue) was billed $550, but that was knocked down to $450 thanks to the in-network contracted rate. That's $90 per *minute*, or $5,400 per hour. Now, I understand that medical school is expensive, but $5,400/hr? Really?

Even if you assume the doctor spent two times as long doing other stuff related to my visit behind the scenes (15 minutes total), that's still $1,800/hr. Sure, there's lots of overhead with a building, nurses, receptionists, etc. But lawyers and CPA's somehow manage those costs while being paid a "measly" $200/hour.

I called my insurance company and spoke with the insurance fraud department, but they said that $5,400/hour was normal and expected to spray one wart. (Procedure codes "17110" and "99214 25" for those of you following along at home.) Turns out that they pay the same amount whether the doctor spends 25 minutes or 25 seconds. But even if he had spent a full 25 minutes, that still comes to $1,080/hour (!).

Here's where it gets even worse. My homeopathic doctor charges $15/hour for the exact same service that my medical doctor charged $5,400/hour for. (Actually, she does it for free, since it only takes her about 2 minutes, but if it did take longer for whatever reason, that's what it would cost.)

But homeopathic doctors (mine, at least) aren't covered under my insurance, so I have to pay in cash. To add insult to injury, it's not even tax deductible (until the 7.5% IRS rule kicks in).

Furthermore, with my Cadillac insurance plan, my visit to the medical doctor cost me nothing directly. No copay, no deductible, and no co-insurance. My nearest indirect cost is the $1700/month premium (more than double my mortgage, BTW) that is 100% paid by my employer. (Hey boss, if you're reading this, thanks!) The net result is that it's actually *cheaper* for me to go to the $5,400/hour provider than to the $15/hour provider.

I used to wonder why "health care" costs were increasing so rapidly. Now I know one of the reasons first hand. No one has any incentive to reduce cost. Not the insurance, not the doctor, and not even the patient. There is no connection between the pain of increased premiums and the action required to actually reduce those premiums.

Another reason that that affects me is that in the last three years, my employer has paid over $60,000 in health insurance premiums, while our "explanation of benefits" have totalled less than $2,000 in that time. A different plan would be more appropriate for me, but laws and the tax system severely penalizes choice and competition by making employer-provided benefits deductible above the line and forcing them to provide certain coverage for everyone, rather than what's appropriate to each.

One action costs me $15 (cheap provider), and costs all policy holders nothing. The other action costs me $0, but all policy holders are charged $450 (spread out so that my portion is only a fraction of a cent). Now multiply that by millions of patients and health-related events and think of the effect.

So what do we do about it? How do you incentivize someone in my position to put the good of the many (lower insurance premiums for everyone from the $15/hour provider) over the good of themselves (higher direct cost due to uncovered services)? How many people even bother to fin

Nothing will change.

[koreaman]

Nothing will change; the utilities will keep fucking us over every chance they get. I'm not sure why this still surprises anyone.

Our political system is so locked down by corporations that there is less of a chance of meaningful change here than in China or even North Korea. I'm not saying we're as bad as those places, but we're certainly headed that direction and there is literally no way to change that within the current system.

Nothing will change in the United States without a revolution, which would first require a huge sea change in the culture to even be remotely effective.

Again, chances are slim. May as well move to Europe or Canada as soon as possible.

Re:Nothing will change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you been to Canada recently? Our government is more in the pockets of corporations, as least in regard to utilities and wireless service, that the U.S. could ever dream of.

Except for healthcare. We have that part covered.

Re:I assume...

[Dryanta]

Typically the LEC can bill for intra-LATA charges however they see fit due to the kludge of complexity the original anti-trust left recovering charges from another carrier. Because these rules are so convoluted and don't even make sense to the carriers themselves they tend toward official policy being "we say so and get a subpoena if you don't like it." As a telecommunications agent and broker, much of my interactions with carriers is resolving billing disputes and bogus charges. I got $ 14,000 back for a client in one instance where I had to file a California Public Utilities Commission grievance and escalate to the top tier of AT&T consumer affairs department. Most consumers don't even realize they have recourse and that the carriers are terrified of regulating bodies... but knowing how to handle these things is why people like me make money.

Re:No one routinely gets a list of local calls

[Frosty Piss]

The company just keeps track of the minutes, and one never got a list of local calls. this was true at least in the 1970s when I had measured service in CA. With unlimited local they don't report either.

Yes and no.

No, the company does *in fact* keep tack of every number you call.

And yes, normally you don't get a bill which itemizes local calls.

But none of this is the point.

This lady had a "customer service issue" where in she was disputing a charge. Verizon should be obligated to detail to any customer, on request, the nature of a charge. It's just that simple.

Now, Verizon has an "Itemized Bill Service" for which they charge, and it probably does cost them marginally more in computing and paper, but it's all there in their computers...

If I want ITEMIZED LOCAL CALLS on every bill, I might reasonable expect to pay a small fee.

But if I have a BILLING ISSUE, I expect them to pony up the data as a matter of doing business with me.

Fuck Verizon.

Re:I assume...

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

Only if you want it in print, you can view it for free on your myverizon.com website.

This is the final nail in the coffin

[AllenNg]

We were talking in the office one day and someone was complaining about some difficulty they'd had with customer service for a company from which they'd bought something. I mentioned that the "salt in the wound" is that there isn't even a person that you can get mad at (threaten, intimidate, assault) anymore. It's not like there is a PERSON somewhere who can say, "Ah, yes. I took such and such action on the Smith account because..."

The order was created in the computer either by the checkout scanner or by the automated form on the website. The order was filled and shipped by an automated warehouse (In our warehouse, even the pallet trucks are tied into the system and automated. It's a little unnerving to see these unmanned trucks just whipping big pallets of raw materials and finished goods to and fro in the factory.). The invoice was automatically kicked out in a billing batch run and mailed. No human ever laid eyes on it or had any knowledge that your order ever existed.

Think about that.

It's not like you can call them up and complain to the person that made a certain determination. They hire people off the street to sit in the call center and read what's on the screen. If you owe $50, it's not because someone looked and evaluated the situation. It's because that's what the computer says you owe. If the computer had said $55 instead--THAT WOULD BE THE REALITY.

All that remains is for the computer to become the final arbiter. Not being able or allowed to question or even review the automated data is precisely how that will come about.

Re:I assume...

[Solandri]

The problem is not only with external carriers. Verizon's internal billing system just seems to be a convoluted mess of kludges. About 3-4 years ago, a friend of mine with Verizon Wireless bought a house. Her landline phone service was Verizon RBOC. One day they sent her one of those "Consolidate all your Verizon bills and get a discount!" flyers and she signed up. She started getting bills which showed both her landline and wireless charges, and she dutifully paid them.

3 months later she got a phone call from Verizon Wireless about her account being overdue. She explained that she had consolidated billing with her home phone service and had paid. They insisted they hadn't received any payment. She called Verizon RBOC and they confirmed that she had consolidated billing and had paid her wireless bill. But nothing she or they could do could convince Verizon Wireless that she'd paid. They shut off her cell phone service, messed up her credit score, then eventually closed her account and gave her phone number to someone else before finally getting the whole thing straightened out about 6 months later.