Level3 tries cell-phone style billing scam on customers

Thu Jul 31 19:34:04 UTC 2008

On Jul 31, 2008, at 3:28 PM, Jamie A Lawrence wrote:
> On Jul 31, 2008, at 2:45 PM, Gadi Evron wrote:
>
>> Isn't malicious, just not very ethical. Having been on the  
>> recieving end a few times.. you don't always know it is happening.
>
> I'm not sure that's a useful distinction. I strongly doubt any  
> vendor has actual malice towards me (modulo some people I've pissed  
> off at times in panics). Ethics are what I hope for from partners,  
> try to demonstrate, and it is proven over time.
>
> That said, inventing random fees, hiding them as "taxes" or  
> "federally mandated something or other", and seeing what sticks to  
> the wall in order to get that tiny percent profit boost is not going  
> to make any friends in a network community. It works much better  
> with cell customers or unaware bean counters, but netops folks are  
> going to see it. L3 have given me reason to not like them in the  
> past, and this is just more of the same. The problem is that the big  
> boys seem to be racing to the bottom, so there isn't anyone better  
> to which to defect.

Calling something a "tax" or "federally mandated" when it is not  
sounds both like a class action suit waiting to happen, and illegal  
enough to have the company at least fined.

Why doesn't Cuomo go after problems like this instead of the BS he  
likes to chase.  It's got to have an appeal to at least as many people  
who vote.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick