ozwaxc
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posted on October 21, 2000 03:34:06 AM
Verizon (the new name for the local telephone company in the Northeastern US) has applied to the NJ to change their terms of service.
They want to create a package of services (basic phone service plus call waiting and call forwarding) with a limit of a certain number of hours. After that they would start charging by the hour.
The senior citizens are up in arms because their bill would double and they don't really want to pay for the extra services they don't use.
I don't see any protests by the on-line community however. I go way over the new limits on local calls because of the time I'm online - I don't want to pay for that. I know in places in Europe they do pay for the local calls to stay on line.
I've been toying with switching to cable. This might be the thing that pushes me over the edge to cable.
Any one else affected by this? What are you going to do?
Karen
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Meya
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posted on October 21, 2000 04:52:04 AM
Do you have a link to an news article or web site that explains the proposed changes?
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ozwaxc
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posted on October 21, 2000 05:44:33 AM
Meya, here's an article that references it
http://www.injersey.com/news/app/story/0,2110,305300,00.html
Karen
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VeryModern
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posted on October 21, 2000 05:49:40 AM
last ditch effort to make a few bucks. Everyone will wind up with cable eventually, for phone service, tv and internet.
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abingdoncomputers
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posted on October 21, 2000 06:09:50 AM
Prediction: In the semi-distant future (7-10 years), the POWER COMPANYs will be the dominant ISPs in this country. R&D in this area is advancing at a rapid pace. Think about it. Every home and business already has the basic infrastructure in place (with existing multiple outlets in every room). And every home and business is already wired to the ISP.
[ edited by abingdoncomputers on Oct 21, 2000 06:11 AM ]
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mzalez
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posted on October 21, 2000 06:23:00 AM
ozwaxc, this is what happened to us with BellSouth when I was on AOL. I started getting phone bills in excess of $200 a month. It got so ridiculous that we switched over to Cox@home cable connection. Once you do a direct cable connection, you'll never be able to go back to the old phone modem. Not only does it save you on money, but lots of time and frustration, too.
The only downside is that the cable connection goes down on occasion, but not any more than the usual 'joy of computing'.
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Shadowcat
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posted on October 21, 2000 07:07:10 AM
Ozwaxc: Yep, one of the joys of living in Europe is getting to pay for how long you use the phone lines, even if it's a local call. We pay a certain amount/"click" and the rates vary with the time of the day. It's like having a payphone in the house. Our current phone bills run well in excess of $250/month, and almost all of that is online time. And we stick strictly to the cheap rate times!
Calling a cell phone is even more expensive, though.
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tolz
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posted on October 21, 2000 07:09:18 AM
Time for dial-up customers in your area to get a cable modem.
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mballai
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posted on October 21, 2000 07:15:51 AM
At the moment this is a proposal and it has opposition; you'd think the party that invented the Internet would oppose it, but it looks the Republicans are in this case.
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mark090
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posted on October 21, 2000 08:06:54 AM
When you get a cable modem, you can also eliminate your telephone Long Distance company. Just use dialpad.com for free long distance. The phone companies are just going to go broke trying to stick it to the consumer.
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cassiescloset
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posted on October 21, 2000 08:46:30 AM
We have a cable modem but my kids sometimes use a free dial-up service for their laptop.
We have Verizon in S. California, so I'm going to keep close tabs on this.
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smw
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posted on October 21, 2000 08:57:47 AM
I have Verizon (BellAtlantic) DSL service. Could it be that Verizon wants more people to subscribe to it's DSL service by requesting rate changes? With the DSL service you have one phone line and can make and receive calls while you are online. Seems to me that Verizon would want more DSL customers than to drive people away to the cable competition.
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dman3
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posted on October 21, 2000 09:05:06 AM
Verizon here in the northeast is the new name for cellular services in the New york area 
I dont beleave they are talking about home service here at all are regular home phones still get billed from bell Atlantic infact the local phone company in my area for bell atlantic service is run by bizonline.com the largest upstate ny local internet provider.
and keep in mind that cellular service charges by the min so an hourly charge for cell phone with online service might be cheaper in the long run.
WWW.dman-n-company.com
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buyhigh
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posted on October 21, 2000 05:59:58 PM
I recall getting something in the mail about getting a package deal but I do not think there was anything about being charged for extra hours on-line if you did not subscribe to the reduced price limited number of local calls so-called metered service. As you know GTE and Bell Atlantic merged and the new name of the company is Verizon. If you have the plan where you are allowed unlimited local calls, you are never charged for time spent when you make those calls. Besides, that would open up a whole can of worms. Most people have one telephone company and an entirely different ISP' All of these would go down the drain if this were to occur. If you have not heard AOL, AT@T and the hundreds of others screaming in protest, I do not think this was proposed.
buyhigh
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dannkim
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posted on October 21, 2000 06:09:03 PM
My brother in law lives in Ill. About a year and a half ago, he got his first computer and we helped him set up and found a normal deal with a local ISP for $18.00 a month unlimited access. Well he got his first phone bill about a month later it was $600. His phone company charges 3¢ for every minute his is on the phone. Needless to say, he quickly got the @home network.
[ edited by dannkim on Oct 21, 2000 06:10 PM ]
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 21, 2000 06:39:53 PM
In the story quoted, the difference between service with limited calls and services with unlimited calls is $2.50.
Two hundred and fifty pennies. That's it. We are not talking about hundreds of dollars.
Currently ALL local phone services in the continental United States offer the option for unlimited local calls. Anyone who gets bills for hundreds of dollars for local calls has CHOSEN not to take the option for unlimited calls.
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buyhigh
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posted on October 21, 2000 07:35:03 PM
Amalgamated --- Exactly! If you choose to save money on your phone bill( and it isn't much ) by having the number of local calls limited, you can expect that once you are online for any length of time you are going to exceed that limitation.
buyhigh
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rnrgroup
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posted on October 21, 2000 07:35:35 PM
Well, one hopes that wiser heads prevail, and if Verizon is successful in this venture that the legislatures will pass a law to stop it!!! There are plenty of places in this country where you CAN NOT get cable, DSL, ISDN etc, and are totally dependent on dial up. I happen to live in one of them - and I am in NY STATE!!! I run 5 phone lines multiple ISPs and some pretty off the wall equipment to get decent internet connect speeds - but it is essential that I have unlimited local calls - or my monthly bills would be in the thousands instead of the hundreds!!! I realize this proposal is for NJ, but that would just be the wedge if allowed. -Rosalinda
TAGnotes - daily email synopsis about the Online Auction Industry
http://www.topica.com/lists/tagnotes
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 21, 2000 07:43:11 PM
it is essential that I have unlimited local calls - or my monthly bills would be in the thousands instead of the hundreds!!
Read the story. You can still get unlimited service. It's $2.50 more. That's it.
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avaloncourt
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posted on October 21, 2000 08:12:46 PM
I have lived in GTE and AllTel served areas. AllTel just charges a flat unlimited rate but when I had GTE I had to choose between Measured (they charge you based on how many miles you are calling for local calls), Metered (what that Verizon article was talking about) or flat rate. I was on metered for a while but went to flat rate. Apparently some of you live in states where there isn't much telephone regulation. When I had metered service the charge they billed for could never exceed the fee for the unlimited service. It was a cap set by regulation so nobody would ever get stuck with hundreds of dollars in local calls.
My cellular carrier went from Alltel to Verizon. Verizon swallowed up a sizable portion of AllTel in this region. After this change I have never seen a more inept handling of service by any company. This Verizon merger was much too large and sweeping. Between GTE, BellAtlantic and AllTel, the Verizon company got so large so fast that nobody knew how to handle all these different regions. One of the most bizarre things was that the billing remained segregated into the old companies' terrirotial areas but customer service was regionalized.
I had a cell phone bill that went from $45 one month to $600+ the next. The billing system didn't know what to do with all the changes and started making up fees that had nothing to do with the account. Trying to get this handled through customer service was a fiasco. One day I literally spent 7 hours continuously on the phone with Verizon customer service while no one could seem to locate any account information on me and I was passed from person to person,and call center to call center for hours. I finally latched onto a Verizon manager and demanded her name, direct telephone number and location. She, much to her chagrin, has become my personal customer service person and has to deal with an incredibly screwed up account. I have even been on the phone with her as she credited back incorrect charges made to my account and as she completed the changes, their computer system started making up even more mysterious charges.
At the time of the changeover even the cell phone service began having problems. It turns out that my AllTel/Verizon account is being managed by GTE/Verizon now and the technical side of the cell service went seriously wrong. At one point I could receive no calls at all. It turned out that their "new and improved" network integration software somehow locked my cell phone information into a tower in another state and wouldn't let it release. All calls to me were routed to that state.
All I can say for Verizon is watch out. If you have problems.. document, document, document! Take names and complete informatin. Don't take crap from their customer service people. I got one rep fired because he absolutely refused to allow me to speak to his supervisor or a manager. He then refused to give me any identifying information so that I could contact a manager and have a talk with them about his actions. Apparently this pinhead did not realize that the customer service call information is logged on their computer system and he was easily located and subsequently fired.
[ edited by avaloncourt on Oct 21, 2000 08:18 PM ]
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jakemelon
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posted on October 21, 2000 08:52:41 PM
How is this related to Ebay?
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long_gone
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posted on October 21, 2000 09:05:01 PM
Greetings earthlings, here in the great northeast I was using bellatlantic. Thought it was handy having my cable bill and phone bill combined. For a while it was unlimited hours online with the local dial up #. They log your hours of monthly use with your ISP account. They started charging a dollar an hour for every hour over 150 hours a month for your internet use. This had no bearing on the still free, unlimited local calling. This was even before they merged with Verizon. I used about 135 to 149.8 hours a month and i would check my totals as the months got near the end (in their customer services database).They encouraged you to sign up for a DSL account if your internet use regularly went over 150 hours. In their reasoning this was the defining point between recreational and business use. Kind of like the paypal business account upgrade thing only there was no fiasco that I was aware of. I was kind of wondering how long it would be before they cut it to 100 hours.
Kurt
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ozwaxc
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posted on October 23, 2000 12:24:02 PM
jakemelon
Most of my online time is ebay related, so if they charge more, that might affect how I deal with auctions.
Plus, as I think about it, it might put a damper on bids from the NE US as people get the phone bills ......
so it could (could!) affect bids on ebay!
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yisgood
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posted on October 23, 2000 12:33:10 PM
I just got a package deal from AT&T. 21.95 a month for 75 hours on my first line. 6.50 a month and 9 cents per call (not per hour) on the second line. For $5 more per month, it includes my entire state. The package also includes the long distance package I was already paying $5 a month for. So I got to tell Verizon, wake up and get competitive.
The AT&T phone number is 800-533-6203 for those interested (and no, I dont work for them or any other phone co.)
http://www.ygoodman.com
[email protected]
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jkohnman
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posted on October 23, 2000 03:36:06 PM
I agree with those that hate GTE. Since I moved into an area "served" by them a few years back, my phone went from being something I didn't think much about, to something you really can't take for granted. Customer service is a joke, except it's not real funny. Plus they are much more than PacBell. If it rains, it gets bad, and i'm in the L.A. area, so you wouldn't think you'd have those sorts of problems.
Also wanted to point out, DishNetwork is supposed to have 2 way Satellite high speed service in the next month or two. DSL just became available in our area, but I'm going to wait until I see the deal from Dish, as I want nothing more to do with phone companies than I have too.
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jwpc
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posted on October 23, 2000 04:07:14 PM
Verizon
They just took over our phone system here in South Alabama - we aren't at all pleased with them. There have been no rumors of charging for time on line, but we are in a rural area where few people have computers. If they push the issue down here we will just go to satellite - I live in-between cable companies so can't get cable service. But we are on line 15 to 18 hours a day, so I don't intend to pay the phone company for that.
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sourpuss
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posted on October 23, 2000 04:43:36 PM
"All I can say for Verizon is watch out."
You got that right. Those of us who have been cursed with GTE (AKA "Great Toads of Entropy" have known for years that the relationship is strictly BYOV (V=vaseline).
For the past two years, one or both of our lines go out at random. By "out" I mean dead as a doornail. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, usually both at the same time. Off at the same time, on at the same time -- anywhere from ten minutes to several hours later.
We used to call them on a cellular to talk to repair service (this generally happens in the wee hours of the night), but EACH time (with one exception) they scratch their heads and claim nothing is wrong. The one exceptio was when they said they found a bad "mux card" and replaced it. Well, all I can figure is that either *all* their "mux cards" are rat-f'd, or they were piping smoke up my tailpipe. The problem continues unmitigated.
They did manage to train us, though. We no longer bother to report the outages.
Yes, Virginia (and Michigan, and Noo Yawk, and...), GTE *does* suck. Hard.
--
Not sourpuss on eBay.
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