Phone bills are notorious for rankling customers with fees, taxes, tariffs and other mystery assessments.
Now some phone companies are adding a new line item to monthly bills: a charge for not making long-distance calls.
The category of customers affected by the new fee is the shrinking subset of people who have no-frills home-phone service and don't pay for a long-distance-calling plan.
Verizon last month introduced the $2 fee. It is charged to customers who could dial out for long distance, but don't subscribe to a long-distance service and don't make long-distance calls.
Durham, N.C., retiree Daniel Bius discovered the $2 charge on his April bill. He says he has no use for Verizon's long-distance calling plan because he makes long-distance calls on his cell phone.
"Even though I don't have a plan with them, they say I still have the ability to make a long-distance call if I ever need to, so I have to pay them $2 a month?" Bius said. "What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to pay them $2 for no reason?"
The rest of the article is here:
http://reporternews.com/news/2007/may/03/phone-companies-levy-new-fee-not-making-calls/I don't think this is a new practice, though. I remember being charged $5.00/month for the same thing 10 years ago. If you made LD calls, they applied the $5.00 toward that. If you made none, you just paid $5.00 for nothing.
