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"
on the bandwidth bill I have. In the state of PA, telecoms services
are explicitly not taxable.
When you call Level3 billing, they admit in their recorded message
it is not a tax at all, but a surcharge, and if you want to dispute
it you are supposed to quote back their own contract terms to them
via email (i.e. you cannot reach a human).
I would expect this kind of scamminess from Verizon's cell-phone
billing, but a contract is a contract and I can see no provision for
arbitrarily tacking on fees, illegally labeling them as "taxes" and
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
to act like a scum-sucking ILEC.)
--Patrick
--
Joel Esler
http://blog.joelesler.net
http://www.dearcupertino.com
[m]