Phone-y Information

I paid my local and long-distance phone bills last night. Naturally, I check them first to make sure the charges are accurate. They are, but I tend to wonder how much the phone companies are getting away with.

My local phone company charges a "Federal Universal Service Fund" fee, which it claims "helps keep local phone rates affordable for all Americans". Hmm, sounds a bit socialistic for our capitalistic country, but it also sounds like we do nice things for poor people, so that one squeaks by.

I also get charged a "New Mexico Universal Service Charge", which "helps keep basic exchange rates affordable". Now I'm suspicious. In order to "keep... rates affordable", they need to charge me more (twice)?

Side note: with all these "universal service" charges, why am I limited to talking to people on this planet? (Betty, are these fees what enables the Doctor to give a magic cell phone to Rose and Martha?)

My long distance provider has me on a "plan" which charges a fee to provide me with a given rate per minute. I calculated the difference between the fee and how much I would pay for a full rate, and it does show me paying less for the fee. Still, I'm going to go to their web page and see if there's anything better for me.

There is a charge on this bill called a "Monthly usage minimum amount". I have no idea what it means. It is for $4.17. Well, my long distance use was $17.40, over four times the minimum, so do they need to charge me? I want to investigate that one, but of course they don't make it easy for me.

For the "Universal connectivity charge", the long-distance provider gives a phone number and URL "for an explanation of this charge". They do the same for the "In-state connection fee" and the "Carrier cost recovery fee" (note: a different phone number for each). However, the one fee for which they don't give a phone number nor a URL is the one I want to question. Naturally.

Side note #2: I'm charged the "universal service charge" on both bills. That means I'm getting hit a total of three times to make phone service more "affordable".

The lesson here is, even if you always read the fine print, you might get stuck with a raw deal anyway. I'm tempted to send this to Andy Rooney.