Why would anyone care what the ISPs think about how much work they have to do? We’re paying for it, so in what world is it not misleading to withhold information about charges?
If you want to make and add all these fees, I think it is only fair that your are required to list them all.
Stop hiding behind your pussy corporate bullshit, and take some responsibility for your money grabbing thoughtlessness.
Customers want to be able to determine who is of best value, and if you advertise $5 a month but add $45 of “fees” then you are just a cunt, and you don’t deserve the business; even if your SUM TOTAL of $50 a month is less than some other ISP that just says its $54 a month and that’s it.
If you are sneaking about and skirting shit like this, we can only assume you are like that at a corporate level, and everything you are doing is dodgy as fuck.
Not to defend ISPs too much, but I will say that it will be more difficult to quote prices than many expect.
I used to work for CenturyLink in customer support. I’d have callers from 20 different states, and thousands of municipalities. Each and every one of those municipalities had different rates depending on the services. One town would have a franchise utility agreement that has the City tacking on 2% in trade for granting right of ways. Another would have a $11 monthly 911 service fee applied to everything (911 still has to work on DSL so even internet-onlu customers had to pay it), where another might have a 50 cent fee. Everywhere was different, and any number of these fees was subject to change.
Something like a franchise agreement might not move with a fiscal year, or the city ordinance may have had a flat fee that was divided amongst the number of customers. We’d have a fixed rate for a service, but due to the constantly-changing fees the customer may have a different bill every month of the year.
Giving a precise quote in those circumstances was pretty much impossible. Our computer systems weren’t logged into some kind of live fee database of every state, county, and municipal government in the country.
In my job right now I establish fees for municipal government. There’s been some fuckery at the state level so that even I - the person in charge of setting the fees - can’t tell you what a permit will cost in 2 weeks. And my new fees that I have to pull out of my ass will directly affect the franchise fee rates for telecom providers, which is one of those variable fees we all hate.
The truth is Spectrum and Frontier legitimately won’t know what to charge the customers in my town until they’re sending the bill.
Those sound like internal complications of doing business. A well designed software system could solve a lot of those issues. That’s not the consumers problem. Especially when prices are high. If they want to charge fees instead of flat rates they need to say what they are.
That’s like a store that won’t tell you the price of anything until you buy it. Or a hospital lol for some reason we let that one slip
My ISP regularly tacks on extra charges for $1-$5. I suspect they do this to millions of people assuming nobody will call in to complain about five bucks. But at that scale they rake in tens of millions for no extra service. Massive theft.
It’s not like seeing the fees will help anything. Can’t switch to other ISPs since the cable company has a monopoly. Useless government pretending to do work instead of actually doing anything to help.
Can’t the FCC just tell them they’ll be fined if they don’t comply? Don’t tell them how much they’ll be fined. Let them make their decision, then tell them how much it will cost.
It sounds like providers are trying to hide monthly fees in an attempt to obscure them. My ISP will let me ‘rent’ a modem for $10 a month, but I just decided to buy my own for $60 fifteen years ago. My brain says that’s $1800 (it could be wrong, it’s late). If I didn’t know I was paying a $10 monthly fee, I’d never have bought my own.
And if a fee is actually a tax, just put that on the bill. It’s pretty simple.
My isp used to charge $10/mo for a modem rental, so I just bought my own. Now they don’t charge for the rental but all their prices went up by at least $10/mo.
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If it’s not too hard to charge the fees it’s not too hard to name them. Period.
Why would anyone care what the ISPs think about how much work they have to do? We’re paying for it, so in what world is it not misleading to withhold information about charges?
oh waaaaaaah cry about it >_>
deleted by creator
If you want to make and add all these fees, I think it is only fair that your are required to list them all.
Stop hiding behind your pussy corporate bullshit, and take some responsibility for your money grabbing thoughtlessness.
Customers want to be able to determine who is of best value, and if you advertise $5 a month but add $45 of “fees” then you are just a cunt, and you don’t deserve the business; even if your SUM TOTAL of $50 a month is less than some other ISP that just says its $54 a month and that’s it.
If you are sneaking about and skirting shit like this, we can only assume you are like that at a corporate level, and everything you are doing is dodgy as fuck.
If it’s not too hard to charge, it’s not too hard to list.
Not to defend ISPs too much, but I will say that it will be more difficult to quote prices than many expect.
I used to work for CenturyLink in customer support. I’d have callers from 20 different states, and thousands of municipalities. Each and every one of those municipalities had different rates depending on the services. One town would have a franchise utility agreement that has the City tacking on 2% in trade for granting right of ways. Another would have a $11 monthly 911 service fee applied to everything (911 still has to work on DSL so even internet-onlu customers had to pay it), where another might have a 50 cent fee. Everywhere was different, and any number of these fees was subject to change.
Something like a franchise agreement might not move with a fiscal year, or the city ordinance may have had a flat fee that was divided amongst the number of customers. We’d have a fixed rate for a service, but due to the constantly-changing fees the customer may have a different bill every month of the year.
Giving a precise quote in those circumstances was pretty much impossible. Our computer systems weren’t logged into some kind of live fee database of every state, county, and municipal government in the country.
In my job right now I establish fees for municipal government. There’s been some fuckery at the state level so that even I - the person in charge of setting the fees - can’t tell you what a permit will cost in 2 weeks. And my new fees that I have to pull out of my ass will directly affect the franchise fee rates for telecom providers, which is one of those variable fees we all hate.
The truth is Spectrum and Frontier legitimately won’t know what to charge the customers in my town until they’re sending the bill.
Those sound like internal complications of doing business. A well designed software system could solve a lot of those issues. That’s not the consumers problem. Especially when prices are high. If they want to charge fees instead of flat rates they need to say what they are.
That’s like a store that won’t tell you the price of anything until you buy it. Or a hospital lol for some reason we let that one slip
When you go to the store, the cashier doesn’t say “come back in 3 months for the same price.”
I REALLY hate it when websites won’t tell you the true price until you go through the whole checkout process
My ISP regularly tacks on extra charges for $1-$5. I suspect they do this to millions of people assuming nobody will call in to complain about five bucks. But at that scale they rake in tens of millions for no extra service. Massive theft.
It’s not like seeing the fees will help anything. Can’t switch to other ISPs since the cable company has a monopoly. Useless government pretending to do work instead of actually doing anything to help.
deleted by creator
Can’t the FCC just tell them they’ll be fined if they don’t comply? Don’t tell them how much they’ll be fined. Let them make their decision, then tell them how much it will cost.
deleted by creator
Call a Waaaahbulance
Won’t someone think of the poor downtrodden ISPs!
Oh whah, it’s too haaard! Mom, Dad’s making me do chores! It’s not fair! I don’t want to do chores! Don’t make me come visit him any more!
Dad: I just want him to rinse his plate.
almost like they’re asking to be nationalized…
It sounds like providers are trying to hide monthly fees in an attempt to obscure them. My ISP will let me ‘rent’ a modem for $10 a month, but I just decided to buy my own for $60 fifteen years ago. My brain says that’s $1800 (it could be wrong, it’s late). If I didn’t know I was paying a $10 monthly fee, I’d never have bought my own.
And if a fee is actually a tax, just put that on the bill. It’s pretty simple.
My isp used to charge $10/mo for a modem rental, so I just bought my own. Now they don’t charge for the rental but all their prices went up by at least $10/mo.
Comcast tells me I can use my own modem but if I do then I’m capped at 1.2TB a month on my “unlimited” plan.
I have the same cap. Data cap for home internet is a load of bullshit that should be prohibited entirely.
Let me get this right… they’re lobbying their way out to not even list what they’re charging for?
I hope FCC doubles down without lube.