DSL Extreme → Re: Supplier Surcharge Recovery price increase

First my philosophical view. Everything has been increasing like crazy, hyperinflation is well upon us, unemployment is on the rise, and I have just been laid off. Hell, the city just slapped me with some bs "prop 13" basically raising the my property tax because they said the value of my home has increased by 2%, yet I see the prices of the houses on sale around here have dropped considerably.

At this point, i'm almost at the end of my contract, so really for me, it's not even worth it to think about 95 cents. But for those still on a near-full contract, you're looking at .95/mo which means less than $12/yr max. To tell you guys the truth, my monthly fee to pay for gas just to communte to work (before laid off) was $200/mo. I ain't complaining about 95 cents. So no, I'm not about to raise a hissy about this fee increase.

Furthermore, my understanding is that DSLX does NOT make any profit out of this "recovery fee". Am I right??? There was a discussion about his recover fee a long time ago, and I think someone from DSLX said that this fee is controlled by the telco. So to me, if the telco is controlling things, then we're pretty much at their mercy. And DSLX's terms and conditions have clearly stated that taxes and surchages may vary. Now I suppose if you were to go to a judge, and you told him that you wanted to get out of a contract because the "taxes and surcharges" has increase to the point where it constitute 20% of your total bill, then the judge "might" just see it your way, and the judge might agree that in this case, DSLX's terms and conditions were unreasonable and designed to bait & swith people. But at 95 cents, no judge is going to waste him time defending you, especially DSLX has stated that in their terms and conditions.

Now what I would like to know is, do the telcos charge their OWN clients this same recovery fee??? If they do, then switching over to them is kinda like a woman who marries the guy who raped her. It just makes no sense.

However, I would like to hear what George has to say about this.

I always call these the 'unfees'. I strongly believe that service provider charges should be up front with a single figure - i.e. ($27.87/mo for 3M DSL!) They should be up front, and charge their actual price and advertise it as such.

All these tacking on of fees and surcharges lets the providers offer a lower price (i.e. $24.99), but ends up upsetting customers after they find all the fine print. While DSLX's charge isn't too terribly bad, the other telecom companies (namely cell phone providers and landline providers) are the worst.

That is why I don't understand why new customers of DSLX get upset when they don't see the "full" charges for service when DSLX has no control over the "extra" charges the ILEC charges DSLX. DSLX can only advertise the price they have control over which is the base price without the extra ILEC charges. Someone should "test" the extra charges the ILEC charges in court!

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Hell, the city just slapped me with some bs "prop 13" basically raising the my property tax because they said the value of my home has increased by 2%, yet I see the prices of the houses on sale around here have dropped considerably.

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That prop 13 is a good thing. It limits your property tax increase to a maximum of 2%. Without it my property taxes would have more than doubled in the last 9 years.

If you feel your home's assessed value is less than the shown assessed value, you should have your home re-assessed. They explain how to do this on your property tax bill.

We've bought our home over 15 years ago, so the assessed value on it now is still lower than all the the other free-falling houses. But still, I think that it's unfair to in a way penalize those who bought their homes a long time ago and have to pay the 2% "market increase" when the market is decreasing. But I should be thankful that our property tax is still 1%! These days, seems like the common man (or woman) is getting screwd left and right!