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Yes, when I check it out online it says $60.99 for Verizon Freedom Essentials. But when I looked at my friend's bill she had over $30 in taxes and surcharges. She had nothing unusual , like overseas calling plan. I don't remember all the charges, but they were the usual BS fees.
I call any surcharge or fee BS, if it is something that you don't have the option to drop and it is not a tax. It's just deceptive pricing.
The fees are disclosed in the Terms & Conditions of Service. It would be deceptive if they were not disclosed. When you start new service, you are provided with an estimate of all monthly charges.
Nobody likes to pay them, but if you object to them, choose another provider that either does not charge as much or factors them into the total monthly cost of service.
Yes, when I check it out online it says $60.99 for Verizon Freedom Essentials. But when I looked at my friend's bill she had over $30 in taxes and surcharges. She had nothing unusual , like overseas calling plan. I don't remember all the charges, but they were the usual BS fees.
I call any surcharge or fee BS, if it is something that you don't have the option to drop and it is not a tax. It's just deceptive pricing.
Odd. I'm with Verizon and pay just under $5 a month for taxes and fees. Perhaps there was a one time activation fee included?
The fees are disclosed in the Terms & Conditions of Service. It would be deceptive if they were not disclosed. When you start new service, you are provided with an estimate of all monthly charges.
Nobody likes to pay them, but if you object to them, choose another provider that either does not charge as much or factors them into the total monthly cost of service.
In the case of Verizon Home Phone Essentials, I would never pay that much for a voice line. My friend is frightened of change and she has had landline service for her whole life.
As to the general comment that: It would be deceptive if they were not disclosed.
I cite my cable bill surcharges:
Broadcast TV Surcharge $9.03
Sports Programming Surcharge $7.82
Entertainment Networks Surcharge $7.10
Surcharges & Fees disclosure
Broadcast TV Surcharge: Recovery of a portion of the rapidly increasing costs charged by local broadcast TV stations for carriage rights.
Sports Surcharge: Recovery of a portion of the rapidly increasing costs of sports related programming.
Entertainment Networks Surcharge: Recovery of a portion of the rapidly escalating charges levied by entertainment networks such as Viacom, AMC, Turner, Scripps Networks and others.
My comment is that the disclosure does not make these surcharges any less deceptive. Broadcast, Sports, and Entertainment are fundamental to cable television viewing. These are not optional services. The cable company is simply billing you an additional $23.93 below the line so that they can advertise deceptively low rates.
The other three taxes and fees are non deceptive below the line rates
$3.21 Cable Franchise Fee
$0.06 Regulatory Fee
$1.44 State Sales Tax
Phone through Exede satellite, cell towers and land lines could disappear and no big deal for me. Power could go out and I have a generator and a backup generator and DC to AC inverters to power things. Smoke and heavy cover is by definition transient. What I find humorous though is why people would want to be yammering on a phone in the middle of a disaster. After Hurricane Wilma took out power, I don't think we made more than a couple of calls, and those were not particularly critical.
"Hi mom? This is your son Pizzaro. I'm up to my a** in Incas. Love ya. Bye."
"Hi WKRP? I've been trying to call in to win those free tickets, but we've had a disaster here."
If you are calling for help in or immediately after a disaster, you might just have had poor planning.
Landlines have built in power in order to carry the signal. However in these cases with massive fires they will likely go down with forest fires.
Wireless is better but not a guaratee that you will get signal. Many cell phone towers could also be impacted by the fires. Fortunately, it's easier to have mobile wireless towers when there's a problem with a tower.
I think land lines should be replaced with fiber optic lines, the old telephone lines should be obsolete. There's no reason having land line phones over copper. Wireless is better in every where with current tech. Fiber optics is a different story, we should be converting much faster medium.
Landlines have built in power in order to carry the signal. However in these cases with massive fires they will likely go down with forest fires.
Wireless is better but not a guaratee that you will get signal. Many cell phone towers could also be impacted by the fires. Fortunately, it's easier to have mobile wireless towers when there's a problem with a tower.
I think land lines should be replaced with fiber optic lines, the old telephone lines should be obsolete. There's no reason having land line phones over copper. Wireless is better in every where with current tech. Fiber optics is a different story, we should be converting much faster medium.
Two points: you don't need high speed anything to chat on the phone and all of the fiber optic phone set ups in our area have back up batteries good for 6 hours. Not useful in a real power failure. At least the copper system has a 48 hour battery back up
Two points: you don't need high speed anything to chat on the phone and all of the fiber optic phone set ups in our area have back up batteries good for 6 hours. Not useful in a real power failure. At least the copper system has a 48 hour battery back up
Who says anything about running fiber optic just for voice. Wireless tech has replaced the need for landlines, I have not had a landline phone for 6 years already and it's also faster today for carrying data. When there's a disaster, the quickest way to restore communication is to deploy mobile wireless towers that can run on generator power or solar.
Google can also deploy balloons that carry wireless signals to PR to help with providing signals to diaster areas.
I remember a real life disaster where no phones worked, cell or landline: 9/11.
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