Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Can I rant? (Can you
Can I rant? (Can you stop me?) I just went over a few bills that needed paying and noticed a new page with my AT&T bill: each line which incurs long distance charges will be assessed an additional 99 cents. Why? So that AT&T can recover costs under the following expense categories: Interstate Access Charges; regulatory compliance; advocacy costs; and property taxes.
I AM OUTRAGED. It’s not like I can do much about it but this is ludicrous. Let’s look at these categories:
* The Access Charge is what they have to pay to use someone else’s out-of-state lines. I thought that was what I was paying them to handle for me. “Oops, when we agreed to provide a service to you, we didn’t realize we’d have to pay for it ourselves - our bad - let’s just have you pay us for what we do and cover our costs when we use someone else’s service, and call it even.” Insulting.
* Next: “regulatory compliance.” These guys are in business to make money, not to follow any stinking laws - if that’s the way we’re going to be about it, making them “comply” with all kinds of bogus “regulations,” well there’s no reason they should have to foot the bill, right? Regulations are there for the public interest, not AT&T’s. Public benefit, public cost. Makes sense? Not really. That’s just making me pay extra for someone to follow the rules. “It’ll be $200 to fix the wires in your house. Of course, if you want me to comply with regulations, it’ll be $250. Your choice.” I choose to ducttape you to a sawhorse, but looks like I got strapped down to it already.
* Okay, I’ll skip down to property taxes: why am I paying their tax bill? Don’t people who own property have an obligation to pay taxes on it? Didn’t they realize there would be tax on all that property they bought? Why should I pay for their lack of planning or - dare I say it - for their stupidity? If they don’t like the system, they should rent the property they need and let someone else pay the tax. Of course, then we’d probably have to pay an assessment for “leasehold obligations.” Dorkwankers.
* And I’ve saved the most outrageous for last: Advocacy costs. WTF??!!!! This is lobbying, right? They want me to pay for their mouthpieces who are trying to get regulation reduced, to get permissible charges increased, to come up with extra ways to gouge the public and chisle a few more pennies out of an already-stone-broke population? I’d be just as happy if they didn’t have advocates at all. I’d prefer not to have to pay them to find new ways to ream me.
What they’re doing is making us pay for their business costs, tax burden, and for making our own phone service more expensive and less responsive. And if you don’t like it, I have three cubic yards of sand that we can pound together. Ma Bell has always been a whore but now she’s pimping us out for her own fun and profit. I feel so cheap.