Slashdot Mirror
The Ridiculous Tech Fees You're Still Paying
Esther Schindler writes "None of us like to spend money (except on shiny new toys). But even we curmudgeons can understand that companies need to charge for things that cost them money; and profit-making is at the heart of our economy. Still, several charges appear on our bills that can drive even the most complacent techie into a screaming fit. How did this advertised price turn into that much on the final bill? Why are they charging for it in the first place? Herewith, fees that make no sense at all — and yet we still fork over money for them. For example: 'While Internet access is free in coffee shops, some public transit, and even campsites, as of 2009 15% of hotels charged guests for the privilege of checking their e-mail and catching up on watching cat videos. Oddly, budget and midscale hotel chains are more likely to offer free Wi-Fi, while luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us.'"
This isn't odd at all. People staying at budget and midscale hotel chains are more price sensitive, so they're going to not come to your hotel if you don't have free wifi. The people staying a luxury hotels are not as price sensitive and are more likely to be worried about other things beside a charge for internet access when selecting a hotel.
Seriously? That's 4 years ago. That's a lifetime in the industry
luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us.'
The company is paying for that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
>Oddly, budget and midscale hotel chains are more likely to offer free Wi-Fi, while luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us.
Not odd in the slightest -- the majority of said "luxurious" hotel rooms are being consumed by (in no particular order) #1 the price insensitive and #2 business travelers (arguably a great overlap, if not outright subset, of group #1).
Few of either group in covering a hotel bill for a few nights in San Francisco are going to care much if it's $845 or $885 with Internet.
Finally, those in group #2 are much more likely to have elite status with the hotel, which typically (at the higher levels) includes free internet -- making it a "valuable" perk for your brand loyalty...
---------
There is no try at jedinite.com
I recently almost renewed my contract with Verizon (business plan @~$110/mo after fees and taxes). But Verizon Wireless tried to charge me for an "Upgrade fee". They wanted $30 just for upgrading my device (and re-subbing my contract). This is on top of the normal price of the phone and 2/year contract. So I left for T-Mobile instead and the coverage has been very good and LTE speeds even faster (suburban northeast USA).
Agreed with the rest of the article too, but I cant remember a time when I had to pay a to check my bank balance. That's either an illegal fee or the author needs to switch banks desperately. (preferably to a credit Union).
Tethering...is possibly the most ridiculous of fees though.
Their last example - payroll cards with fees ought to be outright illegal. IMO.
Why pay? Connect to their access point and tunnel all of your traffic over DNS or ICMP. The firewalls that they use rarely block ICMP and almost never block UDP port 53. All you need is to have a client installed on your machine and run a server out on the interwebs somewhere that is running the right server software and acts as a proxy. The tech to do this has been around for quite a while, and most linux distros have the clients and servers in their repositories. The main system used for DNS is called iodine and there are two different, very good ICMP tunnels that I know of. One is here and another here. If you search through your favorite linux or BSD distro's repository search for "ip over icmp" or "ip over dns" and you'll find what you need.
Internet costs in Australia. Its not uncommon to pay around $70/month for ADSL 1 speeds (1.5Mbps).
I see you're on Telstra.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's actually a load of nonsense - the figures you are quoting is the average across the country. Telco deployments are not based on these average figures, which is why there is actually no internet provided in the middle of the Simpson desert despite the statistic telling us there are 2.8 potential customers every square km. Serving a town or a CBD environment is not that different from place to place, although there are extremes even within the sanitised figures. The vast majority of Australians live in urban areas, ie suburbs, the customer density of Australian suburbs doesn't differ that much from UK suburbs, or US suburbs.
That is a propaganda lie. Proof is easy, these following infrastructure items all cost more than communications infrastructure; roads, gas services, power services, sewerage services and storm water services. All of the cost more to build and more to maintain. Funnily enough not one of them in metropolitan areas is subject to population density. When it comes to linking cities of course roads cost way and above the cost of putting a cable in the ground.
Reality is, countries with substantive infrastructure also have one other burden, incumbent telecommunications firms run by psychopaths who routinely lie, deceive and misrepresent reality in order to generate greater profits. Lies to keep rotting copper profitable, lies to prevent self publishing and attempt to monopoly publishers, lies to restrict bandwidth in order to be able to charge more for it, lies to prevent governments working around that insane greed in order to create what is becoming an essential broadband service.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen