Gripes, pisses and moans

I just read a story on msn which got me to thinking about one of my big pet peeves in life. There are things I don't understand and one of them is the modern methods that some industries use to do business. I have cell phone service through Verizon. I don't really have a choice. People say I do and could use AT&T or Sprint, but there coverage in my areas is sort of like shit. Actually it is shit. Verizon is the only company around that covers not just all of my state but all of my county and the surrounding counties. Even with Verizon there are some areas I have to go, required by my job, where there is no cell phone reception. I have 2 phones on my plan and I was told my plan would be $74.99 per month. That was with a 10% discount on 1 phones access charge due to my employer also being a major Verizon customer. A benefit of my job I guess. The last time I signed a contract with them, I asked repeatedly what my bill would actually be. The salesman kept giving me a funny look and quoting the $74.99 amount. He finally after about 15 minutes of arguing admitted there would be some taxes but it should still be under $90. My average bill, with no overage charges, additional data charges, or long distance from outside of the US calls is $114. 60. That's almost $40 over what I was told. I look at my bill, pick, poke and pry but there are so damn many access charges, taxes, and stuff they claim is required by either state or federal government. I don't get this. If they know they are going to have to charge $10 for some sort of federal access charge, add it to the damn plan cost. Same with state charges. I know that in many cases they may have to charge state and local sales tax and that is hard to predict the exact amount on, but I would rather know up front to expect a $95 bill with tax than a $75 bill that gets inflated to $95 with additional fees and charges then gets tax added. Also, how do I know these charges and fees are legitimate? Why aren't they upfront with them. Obviously they want to make the sale and the lower the price looks the easier the sale, but there really should be some sort of disclosure laws, something to prevent the sticker shock from having an expected $8x bill be a $1xx bill.

Also there is now a company that is offering a prepaid cell phone card that works with any Verizon phone or their phone, uses verizon numbers and costs $49.99 for unlimited mobile to mobile, mobile to land line, text and internet access. I don't have that with my phone. I have unlimited mobile to mobile with other Verizon phones, nights and weekends, and unlimited text on one phone only. I have no internet access on the phones at all. I would actually save a few bucks a month going to that plan, I just have to remember to purchase and activate 2 cards every month. You can bet in March when my contract is up and they are making all the offers to try to make me renew I will be asking questions.

The only other business that seems to be working in this way is satellite television. Now I cannot get cable where I live. They stop the cable about 1/2 a mile from my house and refuse to run it any further despite there being plenty of houses along the way. For a long time, my only option was the various satellite providers. When I first moved out I had the rather limited selection, but reasonable pricing and simple billing of Prime Star. Then they were absorbed by Direct TV. There may be other choices elsewhere, but currently Dish Network and Direct TV. To give full disclosure, I have never had Direct TV service, only Prime Star and Dish Network. I can't say for sure that either cable or Direct work this way, but Dish did. I'm not up on pricing or anything, so don't expect dollar accuracy, but basically with any type of tv you choice a package. They generally have 2 to 4 different packages usually with each advance offering more channels with an increase in price. Then there are usually some smaller sets of channels you can add to a package for an additional monthly fee. For instance there is a base package of channels that most people want, but there will be a few highly popular channels that will be available only by going to the next package.

As an example, say the basic package is 30 channels for 29.99 but they leave off the syfy channel, USA, Disney Kids and one of the ESPN channels. There isn't a subset with those, you have to go to the midlevel package which offers 45 channels for 34.99. There is a superpackage that offers all the midlevel channels plus Starz, Encore and their specialty channels for 44.99 but you don't want that. You do want history international, biography international and some of the discovery subchannels though and that group is an extra 4.99 per month. You aren't interested in HBO or Showtime but would like your local networks via satellite, so that is another $4.99 so now you have a monthly bill of $44.97 right? Yeah, right. That $44.97 bill will probably be closer to $70 by the time it is finished. There are taxes, access charges, ect that go on. I have never figured it out. Now often you don't own the equipment, so they charge rental fees on the boxes and dishes too, but even if you own the equipment, you never pay just for the package. Apparently they share a training facility for the accounting personnel with the cell phone companies.

I currently get digital cable through my telephone company. I chose the basic package plus the family add on to get some of the extra history and discovery channels. It came out about $50 a month. I dreaded the first bill, but you know what? My phone bill only went up about $50 a month.