---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <1ee57abc-f8db-4176-be7f-12de4de3cfba@googlegroups.com> Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2016 13:28:16 -0800 (PST) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Re: My local phone company is lost at the frontier On Saturday, February 27, 2016 at 1:36:28 PM UTC-5, Doug McIntyre wrote: > I think part of it is that the government has made it soo complex a > tax structure. eg. just for sales tax, we have to charge different > sales tax depending on the zip code of the customer being shipped to. > So if I have a customer that has three locations, almost certainly, > the sales tax for them will be different for each of their locations. > Ie. Besides the base state tax rate, Downtown has an additional tax > levy of 0.5%. Hennepin county has an additional tax levy of > 0.15%. There is also a transit tax levy of 0.25% in Hennepin county, > but not in Scott county. Thankfully we're not doing any hospitality or > entertainment, as those are additional levys ontop of those listed > above. While there is variance in sales tax amount by locality, it usually would not significantly affect the amount of the total bill. Anyway, regarding the original question, the carriers managed to get virtually all of their services deregulated, so they are no longer a "public utility". This applies to both the telephone and cable-TV bill. Both carriers do the same things. The problems is that carriers can get away with being secretive about their pricing, and do so. Just line airline fares, every customer gets charged a different rate. That rate is dependent on luck, the sales rep, and the negotiating skills of the customer. Everything is a 'package' now. The price of the package and what it includes varies constantly. Accurate information is not available online. In my own dealings with the companies, usually what they tell me on the phone is not what shows up on my bill. Sometimes it is lower, sometimes it is higher. It is also very difficult these days to get a knowledgeable competent service representative. Far too often we get a bored overseas agent who is merely reading from a script, and usually gives out inaccurate information. For instance, I've been told contradictory information on whether *69 calls are included in my calling package. To illustrate, myself and two neighbors have supposedly identical telephone service from Verizon. Yet we all pay three different prices. Further, some of the monthly fees vary every month, such as the "Federal Subscriber Line and Access Recovery Charge". ------------------------------ Message-ID: <47b3c012-e6d6-49b3-bd55-d56842ede43a@googlegroups.com> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2016 12:21:29 -0800 (PST) From: Steve Fleckenstein <ocskywarn@gmail.com> Subject: Re: My local phone company is lost at the frontier > Nobody under the age of 30 *has* a landline. Nobody under the age of > 20, if they grew up in the US, remembers a day when cell phones were > not ubiquitous. Which is why the audio quality of so many of the business conference calls I am on really, really stinks. Too many participants on cell phones with muddy audio, excessive dropouts (probably due to a marginal connection to a tower), combined with thick heavy accents where English is a second language. Drives me nuts. Steve 73 de N2UBP ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Tue, 01 Mar 2016