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To the US wireless industry: stop treating your customers as prisoners
- makecheck 16y agoThis article has a great set of examples. I have a phone that is many years old. I have gone to web sites for U.S. carriers to try to find a replacement, and I often leave the entire site without finding a single worthwhile offering. If I didn't know better, I'd guess that they were trying not to sell any of their products. Even if I forget the phones, and just look at the plans, all I see is overpriced garbage. While I could afford $99/month, I see no reason to pay that to keep a stupid phone working; $30/month is more than enough. Not that you actually pay whatever they say. Here is a list of additional fees, verbatim, from my last bill: - "Federal - Univ Serv Assess Non-LD" $1.15 - "State - Univ Serv Assessment" $0.80 - "State - Margin Fee Reimbursement" $0.34 - "Regulatory Charge" $0.40 - "Administrative Charge" $0.99. In other words, $3.68 per month, or $44 more per year, of absolute crap that is not in the advertised cost of service. And that's not even counting things like charging for incoming text messages (which they do). I couldn't agree with this article more; the wireless industry has lost its mind, and it needs to be fixed.