I am not sure if this should actually be in the Hall of Shame. Guess I'll find out soon enough.

On my NexTel bill there is a line item called Infrastructure Fee. $1.99. I asked NexTel what this was for. The answer: Provided the funds to put up new towers in our area. .......
Granted it's not much. Still, two things bother me about this.
1. I thought the fixed price of the phone service is my part of the deal. Didn't know I would be paying for infrastructure upgrades. What next, "We need new computers in our offices" charges? Should I also contribute to their advertising budget, pay for office supplies?

2. It's the principle of the thing. Just add a small charge to all your customers invoices. Give it some offical sounding name. Who is gonna take the time to complain about it? Me.

Richard

Richard, a flat fee may not really mean a "Flat Fee" the fine print somewhere may state that: "customers may be billed a minimal fee for tower usage and reconditioning costs."

$1.99 is very small where you are at. And they probably have many many towers.

Consider this: Would YOU want to keep using up to date equipment and have a reliable service just for paying them an extra $1.99?

topher,
Good point. I'll check the fine print.
Yes, $1.99 is a small price to pay.

Richard

Another thing to add is:

Nextel uses a crapola load of features from their towers... Each feature needs a program to run, and as the phones and technology increases they need to be updated, or you may find your self with the all dreaded "NO SIGNAL"

I gotta agree with richard we are being feed to death.

when you buy a car... admin fee. you negotiate in good faith and come to an agreement of a price and then the dealer slaps on an admin fee. As if to say "we'll make up our losses in negotiation with a fee"

the gall of my electric utility... they have one item on our bill entitled: "line losses" which apparently covers transmission losses that bleed off of the infastructure. Is it my fault they have crappy transmission lines and voltage drops on the lines.

I say fight fees.... Insist on paying the negotiated price for your car

What happened to ethics? If they say it is $39.99 a month plus taxes, that is what it should be. If they have to nickle and dime you for $1.99 that they are afraid to put up front, why would you want to have them give you service.

I don't mind paying what the fee it, but put it up front. If they have to have $42.00 a month to run their service, then don't tell me it is $39.99 and hide $1.99 in the fine print.

I did a joint service call with my former Paetec sales rep. He took the other guys bill and compared it to his proposal and then I found out he was comparing the old bill including taxes with his proposal that had taxes to be added. You want to do nice business for the next three years and lie about sales tax? That is such stupidity, as if the customer wasn't going to find out be be perfectly happy with the deception. Oy Vey!

Tell me what it really costs and I will buy it or not but don't lie to me.

While I agree they need to be up front, also keep in mind that pretty much the whole Gulf Coast was torn up the past two years. There are a finite number of capable tower workers, and the prices of any constrution type work, material, cranes etc have nearly tripled since the hurricanes. Add that to the fact that most of the carriers are adding backup Generators to each site, I'm surprised that if there is a loop hole in the contract that would that let them add an infrastructre fee that it's only 1.99. At that rate it would take over 500 subscibers to pay for just one out of the usual nine per site cable runs up the tower. That's just the cable runs not counting any of the Equipment.

These added fees are so the profits can continue to grow for the stock holders. It use to be that a company made a good profit off of its services or products and took that profit and put some of it back into upgrades, improvements, growth. The rest was for sharing with employees and stockholders. Now they are greedy and throw fees left and right at us. Until we refuse to accept this practice and do without the products/services they offer it won't change.

I'm just thankful you noticed the fees as most people out there don't even take the time to look at their bills and ask questions.

When we find any new fee on any bill research is KEY! It leads to many refunds and credits too.

If you ever need a large number of cell phones audited I can steer you to the right people who also provide Government wireless audits. We don't sell any wireless products and find it tough enough to keep up with all the fees and tariffs on local services, and long distance, frame relay, internet billing and such that we leave wireless tariff to those who specialize in it.


Thanks for the great posts!

What I cant stand is when carriers quote local PRI service at say $550 per month plus applicable fees and taxes and then DON'T tell them the applicable fees and taxes are the EUCL, CALC, LNP, etc., which all carriers are going to have, and drives the monthly recurring charge before taxes up another $500. I come in and quote $700 out the door with everything and I look bad so they go with the "less-than-forthcoming" slick salesman.

That's true we run into many other carriers that neglect to inform customers about added fees, even EUCL/FSLC and taxes. We make sure we are up front with every cost yet because it makes us look higher we run into the same thing, they will go with the untruthful sales person from the other carrier.