TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Another VoIP Company Adds Bogus Fee

Re: Another VoIP Company Adds Bogus Fee

Linc Madison (lincmad@suespammers.org)
Tue, 11 Jan 2005 20:42:36 -0800

In article <telecom24.14.6@telecom-digest.org>, Bart Z. Lederman
<lederman@star.enet.dec.DISABLE-JUNK-EMAIL.com> wrote:

> In article <telecom24.13.3@telecom-digest.org>, Jack Decker writes:

>> What next, you go to the supermarket for a gallon of milk and at
>> the register they tack on a "milk marketing fee" to the price to
>> cover the "Got Milk?" ads?

> Actually, you are doing that already. Go to your favorite search
> engine and look up "checkoffs" as they apply to U.S. agriculture.
> Of course, your payment to support the advertising campaign is buried
> in the cost of the milk, because it's the farmer that has to pay it.
> But you're paying for advertising many of the products you buy. Beef,
> pork, and dairy products are probably the biggest offenders, but I'm
> sure there are others.

You pay the cost of advertising any product you buy, unless it has no
advertising at all.

> I don't disagree with your complaint about telecommunications
> companies tacking on fees to disguise the true cost of their service.
> We've all seen many of them documented here. But I now have doubts
> that the government is going to do anything about it.

The cost of advertising, marketing, etc., is simply part of the
provider's cost of doing business, and *SHOULD* be included in the
quoted price.

I get quite annoyed when I rent a car, for example. In addition to the
taxes and airport concession fees and such, there is an itemized fee,
in addition to the quoted rate, for the license plate on the vehicle,
as well as something that sounds vaguely like recovering the capital
expenditure of the rental company's purchase of the car.

Can I get a rental car without the license plate? If not, then it
should not be a separate line item.

Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org
<http://www.LincMad.com> * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com
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