If it’s not too hard to charge the fees it’s not too hard to name them. Period.
Yeah that’s the most brazen part. They’re more than happy to pull in a dozen set of fees, but cry when they have to clearly list them so people aren’t taken advantage of. This is the type of rubbish that the “free market” produces and why there needs to be some level of government oversight.
“Too hard to list our fees” = “consumers will see how hard we’re fucking them before they sign a contract”
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This is where I am at. Got a phone survey from comcast. Gave them 1 star on every category except how likely am I to continue to use comcast at which point I gave them a 10… because it’s a monopoly and it’s literally the only ISP in my area. I pay 150 dollars for 10mb/5mb service with a 3tb cap. If I go two blocks in any direction I can get 100mb/50mb for 40 bucks with no data cap. Even the exact same plan from comcast 2 blocks away is half the price with 8 times the speed and no cap.
Check out if Verizon has 5G Hone Internet coverage in your area. It’s $35 a month if you have your phone plan with them, as well. (I do not work for Verizon)
Verizon and T-Mobile have home internet via cellular faster and cheaper than you’re getting.
Sounds like posturing to add a new fee for being required to list their fees if their weak argument gets thrown out by the FCC.
With ISP what is really need is Local-loop unbundling but extending to ISPs.
Those that are old enough to use DSL in early 2000, might remember there was a lot of ISPs to chose from. The reason for it was that due to Title II telco companies were required to lease lines to their competitors. When cable started to be popular, ISPs lobbied politicians to categorize it under Title I which removed that requirement. We got Internet back to be categorized as Title II, but this specific rule was excluded and this is what is necessary to bring the competition.
Seriously. We’ve even pushed it onto cell providers, which has been great for consumers - yet we let ISPs push laws which make nonprofit community options illegal in many states
We’ve paid for their networks many times over at this point, and yet we still have some of the worst Internet in the developed world
Seriously. Don’t tread on me
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.
Yeah how does that even work? Don’t they have to list what they sell for their accounting? Isn’t it tax evasion or fraud if they don’t keep track of everything?
It’s about transparency to the customer at point of sale. It’s like nutrition facts for your internet, literally.
Probably means an itemized fee list instead of a generic one that has it all added together and just shows up as “fees” on the bill
That’s weird because they don’t seem to have an issue charging me for a bunch of weird little shit while also keeping close tabs on my usage.
Perhaps they could stop doing both and then it would free up time to innovate like we’ve given them public funds to do time and time again.
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?
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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
I REALLY hate it when websites won’t tell you the true price until you go through the whole checkout process
When you go to the store, the cashier doesn’t say “come back in 3 months for the same price.”
I think a store is a bad comparison since you are outright purchasing a good from said store, not purchasing a service subscription provided by and entirely managed by the store
But the price of the service isn’t managed by the store in this case. The ISPs have no control over costs associated with compliance with local ordinances.
This isn’t something where they can negotiate with a supplier to control costs. If the local government changes a fee, they have to comply, and sometimes that compliance requires a fee change.
We got screwed by a new state law that is cutting millions a year in certain commercial fees for my little town (because commercial developers own state legislatures) so we’re massively changing all our other fees to offset that hit.
My new proposed fee schedule is being announced on the 25th, voted in on the 29th, and go into effect the 1st. It’s literally impossible for the ISP to know what they’ll need to bill customers 2 weeks from now.
Oh, and we have another fee change coming the next month because the fiscal year changes, so it’s going to change twice in 2 months.
I’ll be the first to say ISPs suck. But this is not a simple problem to solve without simply increasing every bill by 30 bucks a month to build a buffer in case the local jurisdiction does something unexpected.
It may be more difficult than a relatively static price, but if they can figure out how to charge it, they can figure out how to display it. Any ISP sites I’ve used have you put in zip code anyway to view services. There’s no reason they can’t set it up to show the exact fee rates per area. I know you said you’re not defending them, but “it’s hard” isn’t really an excuse.
I’ve had CenturyLink (this time) for 7 years and for the entirety of that time I’ve been on a flat rate plan that is the same charge every month with all taxes and fees included.
I can’t imagine how this needs to be difficult.
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.
I pay $20cad a month to be uncapped, the pain is real.
You were only paying $10/mo. for your modem?? They were charging me $15/mo. for just the television remote! Fuck these companies, seriously (especially Comcast).
Might wanna buy a new modem. 15 years ago was, what, DOCIS2? The new DOCIS4s could get you far faster internet
Charter just increased my bill, and now for $5 more I can get a fiber connection from the city. So that’s what I’m doing. They will provide a new modem for free (technically free, I suppose). I’m lucky enough to live in a place where they’re municipal competition, even though Charter has fought it repeatedly.
The one I have is Docsis 3 (maybe 3.1?), but I have no idea how fiber modems are categorized. Maybe I should look into that 😬 .
Due to any technical/latency improvements?
Otherwise if they don’t pay for more bandwidth it wouldn’t actually get faster, right? If the current modem can already deliver the full speed they pay for?
A lot of ISPs have silently upgraded their bandwidth peaks, without telling customers, and use rented modem speed as a way of upselling. I.e. “We’ll double your speed for $15 a month”
Buying a new modem can end-run that and get you the speeds without changing your bill. When I had comcast in the Bay Area, buying a new modem gave me an extra 100mbit up and 30 down, without any interaction with comcast.
Oh, that’s weird, here in Austria you pay for x mbit down and y mbit up, that’s what you get. No matter your modem.
That’s how it’s supposed to work but a lot of techs just forget to set the limits or update the QoS tables and so your limits are more in the physical realm
Sort of like how in the 90s and 00s you could pop the filter off the line where it came into your house and get extra channels for free
asdfasdf
The requirement that ISPs list all their monthly fees “would add unnecessary complexity and burdens to the label for consumers and providers and could result in some providers having to create many labels for any given plan,” the groups said in the filing on Friday.
It would put undo burden on you for them to tell you what they’re charging for. they’re trying to help you. this isn’t about capitalism, it’s about simplifying the process of them adding fees to your bill in a mutually beneficial way, because neither of you have to think too hard about where the fee money goes. it’s about mutual love, respect, and empathy 🙏
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.
CEO yacht club fee - 5.99
CEO bonus fee - 10.98
CEO bottle service fee - 2.99Idk doesn’t seem that hard…
Executive layoff bonus
Executive uncompensated mandatory worker overtime bonus…
Why are “fees” above the advertised price? It’s just lying about the price of the service.
And they have the audacity to claim it is an issue of “making labels too confusing for consumers”.
They could always fold fees into the overall price, but that would be counterproductive to their real goal: lying about the price in advertising.
Billing charge: 4.99
Itemised bill charge: 10.99
Fee listing fee: 7.99
Issue with you bill? Call our hotline (calls charged @ 1.69/minute)
You missed out on an obvious joke, fee fee for your fee fees :p
Exactly, if it is something that every customer has to pay no matter what, it’s not a fee it’s the cost of the service.
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Seems easy enough to charge all of them
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.
What’s happening here is actually what largely should be happening. The FCC announces that they intend to make some changes, then there’s a period of public comment where anyone including the companies the FCC regulates and their customers can share their opinions, at the end of that period the FCC reviews the comments and can adjust their plans as needed. The reason for this is that the FCC regulates a highly technical field and allowing companies to comment about how a regulation may affect them in ways the FCC may not have thought of helps prevent the FCC from accidentally regulating away future innovations.
In this case the FCC wishes to implement a common sense rule about clearly displaying the full price of the service and the ISPs are saying they don’t like that, so the FCC at the end of the comment period should identify that the ISPs are being silly and implement the rule.
almost like they’re asking to be nationalized…
I’ll believe the US will nationalize a private industry when I see it and then I still won’t believe it.
The GOP would shit themselves
Not technically “nationalized”, but we gave local and state governments control over sewers and water…
Well the internet is also a series of tubes so this logic plays out.
When?
Around the latter half of the 19th century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization_in_the_United_States
I see no downsides here
I’d see that as an absolute win
Unless they were in sole control of it.
Let me do it for you:
- O&M - $3
- R&D - $1
- Tech Support - $0.25
- CEO’s cocaine addiction - $25
- Selling your personal information & browsing history - ($10)
- Profits for Executive Bonuses - $50
- Stock Buybacks to Inflate Value - $25
Fake news–they would never give you a $10 discount for selling your personal information. That’s like taking food right out of those poor shareholders’ mouths!
I assumed it was a $10 service fee to pay for the infrastructure and staff who work hard to sell our personal information.
It’s not a discount, it’s a surcharge
A number in parentheses means it is negative.
Huh, first time I’ve heard of it
My formerly-favorite local pizza place got bought by a chain who put up 10+ TVs that show nothing but ads for the chain and occasionally portions of their menu (which is of course useless as a menu since it’s not visible most of the time). They also replaced the original simple but easy-to-use website with a gaudy infinite-scrolling pile of shit that makes you click through a bunch of “suggestions” just to order and pay for one fucking pizza.
Their pizza is still really good (for now, anyway) but they’ve now added a $2 “technology fee” to every order. Fuck corporate America so fucking hard.
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.
