[106506] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Level3 tries cell-phone style billing scam on customers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joel Esler)
Thu Jul 31 12:04:40 2008
From: Joel Esler <eslerj@gmail.com>
To: Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick@zill.net>
In-Reply-To: <4891DE62.9000202@zill.net>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:04:15 -0400
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
At what point is regulation okay?
J
On Jul 31, 2008, at 11:46 AM, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> Today I looked at my most recent bill from Level3.
>
> They are now assessing a 2.5% surcharge, which is listed as "Taxes" =20=
> on the bandwidth bill I have. In the state of PA, telecoms services =20=
> are explicitly not taxable.
>
> When you call Level3 billing, they admit in their recorded message =20
> it is not a tax at all, but a surcharge, and if you want to dispute =20=
> it you are supposed to quote back their own contract terms to them =20
> via email (i.e. you cannot reach a human).
>
> I would expect this kind of scamminess from Verizon's cell-phone =20
> billing, but a contract is a contract and I can see no provision for =20=
> arbitrarily tacking on fees, illegally labeling them as "taxes" and =20=
> then putting the onus on you to prove that they can't charge you.
>
> Anyone else seeing this same behavior from Level3?
>
> (It seems that the larger a telecom company gets, the more they want =20=
> to act like a scum-sucking ILEC.)
>
> --Patrick
>
--
Joel Esler
=EF=A3=BF http://blog.joelesler.net
=EF=A3=BF http://www.dearcupertino.com
[m]
