Verizon DSL Customers - You Are About To Be Worked Over!

[launderess]

Read about this on Google a few weeks ago and forgot about it,until this came in today's email:

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Dear Valued Verizon Online Customer,

Effective August 14, 2006, Verizon Online will stop charging the FUSF (Federal Universal Ser vice 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.
For more information, see the Announcement in the Help section of Verizon Central, located at http://central.verizon.net

We regret the need to add this Supplier Surcharge, but we thank you for choosing high speed Verizon Online DSL. We appreciate and value your business.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online
Broadband Customer Care Team

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In other words, Verizon is replacing a tax with a fee, so one's bills are not going down, this eliminates any savings as inteneded by Congress when they repealed the tax.

There ought to be a law.

 

[DADoES]

I don't intend to ever get DSL unless/until there's no other choice for service.

Phone companies are EVIL.

 

[tolivac]

Makes you want to go back to smoke signals!!Oh dear-they'll think of a way to tax or "fee"those-these "FEE" folks need to be SHOT!!

 

[tomturbomatic]

This is similar to the government allowing power companies to add a fuel surcharge to customers' bills during the "energy crisis" in the mid 70s. It used to be that if you operated a business you had an incentive to bargain with your suppliers, but if you can pass the higher costs on directly, why bother? Why does the price of oil increasing mean an automatic rise in the cost of coal and natural gas?

Maryland decided to go with an ENRON modeled deregulation of electric utilities that was supposed to bring competition and a brand new day etc. Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) immediately sold off their generating plants to the ironically named RELIANT, a company in Georgia which tried to declare bankruptcy within a year. Last year our rates increased 20% and this summer they went up 40%. Now there is a campaign on to undo the deregulation. Just like with the phone companies and the cable companies, deregulation was supposed to bring competition and lower prices. Any money the competitors might have used to lower prices to compete has been spent in courts and bribing legislators to keep competition out of their areas. Then there is the joy of fewer direct flights because everyone has to fly to a hub to reach a desired destination. The universal motto of any entity that supplies products or services to the citizenry is: GOTCHA!

 

[knitwits1975]

Hey if you think phone companies are evil, try Comcast.

 

[gadgetgary]

Hey if you think phone companies are evil, try Comcast.

Totally in agreement with your views on COMCAST!

 

[toggleswitch]

Remember when phone bills and cable tv were approximately $30 per month, each.........

 

[Cybrvanr]

yep, COMCAST sucks. They supply CATV and internet services around here, and their customer service is the pits. Their hired technicians regularly perform hack jobs on the systems I build when they install them. Their serice, once installed is intermittant at best, and even when it does work, it doesn't meet up to the standards they advertise. For example, cable modems share the bandwidth with their neighbors, so if your neighbors are all downloading DVD videos, guess what, you're screwed with dial-up speeds!

Yes, Verizon is playing shell games with their service charges, but in the 5 years I've had Verizon, I have never had to call tech support, and the service has never gone down, nor performed below specifications! I can't complain about their service basically because it works, no questions asked! I did need their tech support one time when I helped a neighbor get their system going. The tech on the phone was EXTREMELY knowledgable about the equipment and had me going in and modifying .ini files and the windows registery, along with using all sorts of command line stuff. We got it working after messing around with it for an hour (the problem was some old comcast internet files that purposefully would hijack the system and prevent any other internet service from working!!!)

If you want to see shell games, wait till those "introductory" offers you see in all the comcast commericals expire, and then you'll get sticker shock!

...there's a big reason they are called COM-CRAP around here!

 

[DADoES]

<blockquote>Toggleswitch said: Remember when phone bills and cable tv were approximately $30 per month, each.........</blockquote>
My SBC/AT&T (or whoever are they this week) landline runs about $16, unless I happen to call Bellville for 1.5 hrs. MCI is typically less than $10, unless I happen to call Temple for 1.5 hrs. That's less than $30 combined.

Cell phone is less than $40. Damn phone.

I canceled cable TV.

 

[toggleswitch]

KEWL Glenn.

When I move to my own place ECONOMY plan will be the theme, methinks!

I don't need a zillion television channels.

 

[rp2813]

As a Verizon subscriber for 16 years I can't really complain about their service, and believe me I wanted to jump at any chance to do exactly that, but they haven't given me one. Regulations have loosened up considerably over the past decade and utilities have more freedom to mess around with fees, etc. I'm an AT&T (formerly SBC, formerly Pacific Bell) employee and I can tell you it's very competitive out there and the regulatory framework is quickly being dismantled as competition picks up, especially with Comcast starting to provide phone service. My company had to strike up a deal with Dish Network to offer cable. Even though Pacific Bell began deploying a Tivo type of system nearly 10 years ago. SBC bought Pac Bell and decided their venture into TV was a waste of time and money and they ripped it all out. Yeah, those jokers from San Antonio are just as smart as the joker from Crawford. Plenty of employee resentment here in California over the backward types who took over the phone company here and the stupidity of their old school decisions. SBC was the lamest of the "Baby Bells" and now they control everything, so that should speak volumes about how "the new" AT&T is being run.

As for the deregulation in Maryland, the fiasco here in California courtesy of Enron is still the shining example of deregulation gone wrong, very wrong, and we are still dealing with extra surcharges on our electric bills because of it five years later. I personally think the well-connected Ken Lay is alive and well, living large on a tropical island somewhere courtesy of some string pulling by his buddy George W.

Comcast sucks and I wish my city would grant the cable franchise to somebody else, but I suppose the rates wouldn't be any better. I think cable companies in general have never been held accountable the way the phone companies have always been and it's only been recently that things have loosened up for the phone companies. And that's where that pesky Verizon fee comes into play. No matter how you slice it, the consumers end up digging deeper into their pockets.

Ralph