Customer Asks For Itemized Bill, Verizon Tells Her To Get a Subpoena 415
suraj.sun writes with this quote from an article at Techdirt:
"A woman, who called Verizon to try to find out about the $4.19 she was being charged for six local calls, was told by Verizon reps that the only way it would provide her an itemized bill was to get a lawyer and have the lawyer get a subpoena to force Verizon to disclose the information. Instead, the woman went to court (by herself) and a judge told Verizon (.docx) to hand over the itemized bill info. 'It is a basic matter of fair business practice that a consumer should be able to contact a utility about a charge on a bill and learn what the charge is for and learn that the charge was correctly applied. The only verification that Verizon's witness could offer that a charge like [the customer's] $4.19 measured use charge was accurate and billed correctly was her faith in the accuracy of Verizon's computer system. The only way that Verizon would offer any information about a past charge in response to a consumer inquiry was to require that customer to hire a lawyer and subpoena their own usage information. By no reasonable standard could this be considered reasonable customer service."
I assume... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I assume... (Score:5, Insightful)
They charge a fee to provide a list of itemised calls on my cellphone bill, that alone shows how little regard they have for being transparent about what they are charging.
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if your cellphone bill is mailed then I can understand why itemized billing costs money; remember the giant iPhone bills everyone was getting?
Re:I assume... (Score:5, Informative)
Only if you want it in print, you can view it for free on your myverizon.com website.
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Strange.
In other countries they're required by law to provide you with an itemized bill and sometimes they'll even give you a small bonus (e.g., doubling your FTP quota) if you choose their online billing system instead of having them send you a hardcopy.
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Yep. I'm an 'ol Commonwealth resident, and Verizon is our ILEC/RBOC, formerly known as Bell Atlantic.
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The United States doesn't actually have 50 "states". In fact, there are - uhhhh - 46 states, I think, and 4 commonwealths. In practice, there is almost no difference between a state and a commonwealth. But, there are some subtle legal differences. Some of those differences come into play when discussing issues of "states rights".
I did a couple quick google searches, and I find as much mindless drivel as anything. If you care to learn more, you'll have to devote more than 60 seconds to research, sorry.
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Re:I assume... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I assume... (Score:5, Interesting)
3 months later she got a phone call from Verizon Wireless about her account being overdue. She explained that she had consolidated billing with her home phone service and had paid. They insisted they hadn't received any payment. She called Verizon RBOC and they confirmed that she had consolidated billing and had paid her wireless bill. But nothing she or they could do could convince Verizon Wireless that she'd paid. They shut off her cell phone service, messed up her credit score, then eventually closed her account and gave her phone number to someone else before finally getting the whole thing straightened out about 6 months later.
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If a company wants to use brand name recognition, it works both ways. Good and Bad associations.
Can we get this judge... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we get this judge... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Can we get this judge... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found that insurance companies don't always want you to know either.
That's my experience too, and it's the part that baffles me. Does anyone know why? I would have thought they had a vested interest in reducing costs, but maybe they don't? Is it because they just scale premiums with cost? Does their profit increase as costs increase? If they encourage cost increase for that reason, then that is downright evil. Somewhere between Saruman and Sauron-level on the sinister scale.
I went to my primary care physician (tvc.org) recently to have him spray a little liquid nitrogen on a wart on my foot. It took the family doctor a grand total of 5 minutes, most of which was friendly chit-chat. My insurance (Empire Blue) was billed $550, but that was knocked down to $450 thanks to the in-network contracted rate. That's $90 per *minute*, or $5,400 per hour. Now, I understand that medical school is expensive, but $5,400/hr? Really?
Even if you assume the doctor spent two times as long doing other stuff related to my visit behind the scenes (15 minutes total), that's still $1,800/hr. Sure, there's lots of overhead with a building, nurses, receptionists, etc. But lawyers and CPA's somehow manage those costs while being paid a "measly" $200/hour.
I called my insurance company and spoke with the insurance fraud department, but they said that $5,400/hour was normal and expected to spray one wart. (Procedure codes "17110" and "99214 25" for those of you following along at home.) Turns out that they pay the same amount whether the doctor spends 25 minutes or 25 seconds. But even if he had spent a full 25 minutes, that still comes to $1,080/hour (!).
Here's where it gets even worse. My homeopathic doctor charges $15/hour for the exact same service that my medical doctor charged $5,400/hour for. (Actually, she does it for free, since it only takes her about 2 minutes, but if it did take longer for whatever reason, that's what it would cost.)
But homeopathic doctors (mine, at least) aren't covered under my insurance, so I have to pay in cash. To add insult to injury, it's not even tax deductible (until the 7.5% IRS rule kicks in).
Furthermore, with my Cadillac insurance plan, my visit to the medical doctor cost me nothing directly. No copay, no deductible, and no co-insurance. My nearest indirect cost is the $1700/month premium (more than double my mortgage, BTW) that is 100% paid by my employer. (Hey boss, if you're reading this, thanks!) The net result is that it's actually *cheaper* for me to go to the $5,400/hour provider than to the $15/hour provider.
I used to wonder why "health care" costs were increasing so rapidly. Now I know one of the reasons first hand. No one has any incentive to reduce cost. Not the insurance, not the doctor, and not even the patient. There is no connection between the pain of increased premiums and the action required to actually reduce those premiums.
Another reason that that affects me is that in the last three years, my employer has paid over $60,000 in health insurance premiums, while our "explanation of benefits" have totalled less than $2,000 in that time. A different plan would be more appropriate for me, but laws and the tax system severely penalizes choice and competition by making employer-provided benefits deductible above the line and forcing them to provide certain coverage for everyone, rather than what's appropriate to each.
One action costs me $15 (cheap provider), and costs all policy holders nothing. The other action costs me $0, but all policy holders are charged $450 (spread out so that my portion is only a fraction of a cent). Now multiply that by millions of patients and health-related events and think of the effect.
So what do we do about it? How do you incentivize someone in my position to put the good of the many (lower insurance premiums for everyone from the $15/hour provider) over the good of themselves (higher direct cost due to uncovered services)? How many people even bother to fin
Re:Can we get this judge... (Score:4, Interesting)
Does their profit increase as costs increase?
No. Their profits decrease as costs increase, and they do care about minimizing costs.
Not all of them are particularly good at it, though. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
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I went to my primary care physician (tvc.org) recently to have him spray a little liquid nitrogen on a wart on my foot. It took the family doctor a grand total of 5 minutes, most of which was friendly chit-chat. My insurance (Empire Blue) was billed $550, but that was knocked down to $450 thanks to the in-network contracted rate. That's $90 per *minute*, or $5,400 per hour. Now, I understand that medical school is expensive, but $5,400/hr? Really?
That's crazy! Though, simple procedures like this are easy to do at home. I'm not saying that you *should* self-administer medical treatments, but things like this are easy to do at home and super-cheap. As far as I'm concerned, it's a waste of everyone's time to get warts burnt off - do you go to the doctor to brush your teeth or shave? Because that's about how complicated it is.
And I'm canadian, and so it isn't even a question of cost, just convenience.
If you want to know why costs for serious procedu
Re:Can we get this judge... (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder. What percent of the *actual* cost does $40/month cover? What pays for the rest of it? And what would a 5-minute wart spray cost in your country?
I can't speak for the GP, but here in the UK the NHS doesn't have a great many funding sources. Obviously they are paid for with taxes (the actual amount that goes to healthcare isn't specifically itemised in our tax), but the NHS also carries out some private procedures for medical insurance companies and charges them - I don't know how much profit they make from this.
Pros:
- If I'm sick, I don't have to worry about paying for healthcare.
- I have no idea how much of my money goes to healthcare but there is no earthly way it's anywhere near the $1400/month someone earlier on said their employer was paying. The NHS is almost certainly considerably cheaper per patient than the US system.
- I'm not banned from taking out private medical insurance (I don't know where Americans get this idea that socialised healthcare immediately means a ban on private healthcare) - lots of people do. There's not a great deal of benefit for really serious illness - you'll generally be seen quite quickly for that under the NHS.
- Prescriptions are a fixed cost per-item (about £8, IIRC). If the item costs £1, the NHS is making a stonking profit; if it costs £50 it's making a stonking loss.
Cons:
- If I have a condition which is uncomfortable but not so serious that my health is really threatened unless it's seen to FAST and it cannot be dealt with by my GP, it can take a long time to get sorted. I'd have to visit my GP who would refer me to a specialist (maybe several weeks wait), I'd spend about 5 minutes with a specialist who would order more tests (another 6 weeks), once I'd had those tests I'd get another visit to the specialist who would discuss what, if anything, they showed (another 6 weeks wait). If necessary, the specialist will book me in for a procedure of some sort (another 6 weeks). It could easily be 4-6 months, and that assumes the specialist finds something they can do after the first round of tests. They may not, in which case I may have more tests and returns to the specialist to look forward to. This is the sort of thing people pay private health insurance to avoid.
Re:Can we get this judge... (Score:4, Interesting)
I was once charged for a doctor from another state (a neurologist) when I had a straight forward no complications thyroidectomy. I turned it over to the insurance company's fraud department. I've also been charged because someone had the same last name as I. Again, turned it over to the fraud department.
My experience is that if you report the 'error' as an 'error' nothing gets fixed. If you report the 'error' as fraud. It gets fixed.
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I bet your hospital loves you.... :-D
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Re:My Experience (Score:4, Insightful)
Two, the fact that the MedicalMafia asks for, and then insurance companies pay, those unconscionable fees is the whole damn reason that our system is so farking broken.
Ah, but here is the kicker. The insurance companies don't pay those fees. No doubt they pay "too much", but every insurance company that is accepted at that clinic has negotiated a deal with the clinic and they pay a small fraction of what the uninsured pay. The insurance companies (the largest ones in the area) have a great deal of leverage over the clinics because they have the "consumers" the clinic needs to stay in business. Individuals are screwed, you're sick, you need medical attention and no body represents your interests. Add to that that the hospitals are trying to make up losses on the people who default to pay with those that will pay and it is in the hospitals best interest to take you for every penny possible.
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That's when I get pissed when I hear about 'negotiating power with hospitals'. I hear idiots running around on the news yammering about that, how the US government can use 'negotiating power with hospitals' to make things cheaper.
Fuck you assholes. Seriously, fuck you. For every dollar you negotiate cheaper, I pay more, because they won't sell me insurance, so I have to cover the damn costs that you won't.
Can you say "Single-payer system," boys and girls? Do you dimwits even remember that Obama wanted to
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I've never had a problem getting an itemized bill from the hospital. Have you tried asking?
Once I was charged for a pair of crutches when I had actually brought my own in.
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Itemizing it isn't necessarily the problem, it's the hours it takes to figure out what the various codes mean and it's frequently cheaper to just pay than to take time off work to go through the list with somebody that knows what all those codes mean.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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A friend of mine had a phone call with a hospital billing department where they insisted that yes, during her hospital stay her mother had had a prostate exam.
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All medical care is ultimately paid for. The parent is probably in the "rural country" that's about to go belly-up from the trillions of dollars in foreign aid it subsidizes smug a-holes like you to the tune of.
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Nothing will change. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing will change; the utilities will keep fucking us over every chance they get. I'm not sure why this still surprises anyone.
Our political system is so locked down by corporations that there is less of a chance of meaningful change here than in China or even North Korea. I'm not saying we're as bad as those places, but we're certainly headed that direction and there is literally no way to change that within the current system.
Nothing will change in the United States without a revolution, which would first require a huge sea change in the culture to even be remotely effective.
Again, chances are slim. May as well move to Europe or Canada as soon as possible.
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:5, Informative)
Have you been to Canada recently? Our government is more in the pockets of corporations, as least in regard to utilities and wireless service, that the U.S. could ever dream of.
Except for healthcare. We have that part covered.
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Well, that sucks... I had hoped Canada was at least better off. Europe certainly is, although like most places it's moving in the wrong direction.
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I don't entirely agree with GP. There are some area's that definitely need work (CRTC, i'm looking at you...), but on the whole I don't think Canada is near the plutarchy that the US has become. YMMV.
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're part of the problem, but this doesn't surprise me at all. Greater society is to blame. I've been reading and thinking intensively in the area of economics and the foundation of wealth. Why are some societies better off than others? Ideological purity? I think not.
The people thinking above the scale of the last quarterly profit report are widely in agreement that wealthy societies have superior social institutions. This shows up most of all in discussions about the rule of law. If you think rule of law makes a society impervious to corruption, you're smoking the drapes. But on a larger scale, there's a lot to it. There are certain kinds of financial and legal shenanigans that we implicitly don't accept, where someone in Africa would be posting "I'm not sure why this surprises anyone" about intermittent refrigeration.
America is the most effective venture capital market in human history for good reason: pragmatic presumptions about rule of law are right more often than wrong. You think the Russians drink for no reason?
This is a bit like people thinking there's a health care crisis in America, completely blind to the retirement savings crisis. These are not compatible crises, to the discerning mind. Yes, the health care system is mired in lamentable suckitude. Rule of law is the nucleus of the fruit, not the whole thing. The flesh of the fruit is the venal nature of business and politics as usual. Yes, we've noticed.
The reason that people act as if this kind of behaviour from Verizon is shockingly unexpected is because we cling to the march of human history as mediated by communal opprobrium. The rule of law is still in there and dictates shared attitudes more than you think.
Not in a thousand years will you catch me playing the learned helplessness card on the rule of law. Yes, you might look more hip by stating what's superficially obvious. You're also throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Recently I listened to Dan Carlin interview Gwynne Dyer. He echos what Stephen Pinker has also put forward: human violence is on a significant downward trend over the past 3000 years. It spiked wildly upward when we first started to confine ourselves to permanent settlements. Since then, we've been coming to terms, with millennial stubbornness.
Concerning nuclear weapons in the 20'th century Dyer remarked "we passed the midterm", i.e. we haven't yet blown civilization sky high. Dyer is a specialist in the history of warfare. I didn't much care for his lectures on global warming, nor his comment in the Carlin interview that replacing fossil fuels with alternative sources is just a "diddle" costing 1% of GDP, or some insanely small figure. Shockingly, one idiocy doesn't make him wrong about everything else. He views a looming evacuation of Bangladesh as portent to the end of civilization. Clearly he sees the progressive detente of the past 3000 years as strictly territorial, as if the moment you displace a human from his emotional patch of soil, we're right back to baboons. He could be right. Israel has only taught us so far how things could get an awful lot worse. I got sucked into a long conversation with a Turkish political refugee (now Canadian) about the Israeli question the other day. My god, the learned helplessness card had never looked fatter or more attractive. But still I resist.
It was a huge insight for me when I read that disgust was a primary emotion, and that purity was a universal cultural response (emphasized to different degrees in different societies).
We'll just suspend rule of law while we fix the purity problem by draining the creme of the social and
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Our political system is so locked down by corporations
- you have to understand that the corporations that are locking your political system down are in the position to do so because the government got into their business in the first place.
At some point government of USA even declared AT&T to be a national monopoly specifically, so that nobody could challenge them, they were a 'national resource'. Government by regulations, taxes and subsidies creates the corporate monsters, who then take over the government.
Nothing will change in the United States without a revolution, which would first require a huge sea change in the culture to even be remotely effective.
- yes, a revolution against the government,
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There's a reason that Great Britain is also called the Nanny State.
I expect there is, but it has fuck all to do with utility billing. It's actually about laws that try to influence the way people live their lives, like excessive taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, or car seat legislation, or cycle helmets: that sort of thing. I'd have mentioned prohibition but I don't think we ever had that here.
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ASBOs are the ones I read about and shake my head. Well, that and the continued war against knife crime. I can only assume that England isn't as dangerous as portrayed by the BBC, but the whole notion that nobody goes around with a knife that isn't up to no good is just bizarre.
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I expect there is, but it has fuck all to do with utility billing. It's actually about laws that try to influence the way people live their lives, like excessive taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, or car seat legislation, or cycle helmets: that sort of thing. I'd have mentioned prohibition but I don't think we ever had that here.
I was under the impression that Great Britain employed prohibition to much the same extent the government does here in the US.
Or have you adopted sensible decriminalization policies like Portugal?
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Actually, the "Nanny State" is more than that. It has to do with the idea of positive freedom, and where the line is drawn - ie. should we allow people to choose an alternative option if that option harms society, etc, etc.
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I think I agree with your point re positive vs. negative freedom, but not the example you give: there are many things that are bad for society that are rightly criminal but for me the nanny state is exemplified by laws that restrict things that harm the individual only, if anyone at all.
Take seatbelts - the oft-given example - if I don't buckle up I might die in a crash but it doesn't harm anyone else. I suppose it might weigh on the conscience on someone that causes a now lethal accident but if that person
Re:Nothing will change. (Score:4, Funny)
Take seatbelts - the oft-given example - if I don't buckle up I might die in a crash but it doesn't harm anyone else.
Incorrect. You are now a 180Lbs loose object in the car. Where your children were safely buckled, your dead body bounced to the back seat and injured them. Or you're a 450Lbs object wedged behind the steering wheel... This is slashdot after all.
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This.
This is why I don't want socialized medicine in the US. Because then one can make the (admittedly valid in that context) legal argument that if I do anything that even might hurt myself, I am creating a cost to society and should be prevented. Then laws spring up that try to nerf the world and stop anyone from doing anything remotely dangerous.
I'd far rather allow people to take risks in the full knowledge that they are responsible for their own insurance (or lack thereof).
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As the other poster pointed out, but didn't explain well:
Drivers not wearing seatbelts have a much higher risk of being bounced around enough to lose control of their car in minor collisions, causing much worse accidents.
In an accident, drivers usually keep their hands on the wheel...and that's a good thing if they're still in their seat. If they fall out of their seat, either forward or leftward, then it's a really bad thing, probably worse than just letting go and letting the car drive wherever it wants
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So shouldn't the driver/front-seat-passenger be able to make the call about whether or not they're willing to ride with an unrestrained passenger in the back? I still don't see what interest the state has in this situation.
I'm just going to pretend you aren't asking us to believe that there's any reasonable risk of an unrestrained driver/passenger being in an accident and their body, after penetrating the windshield, causing significant harm to someone outside the vehicle -- it's so unlikely you'd be better
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On the individual, "$PERSON hits their head, how bad are they injured?" level, the statistics back you up on this.
On the larger scale -- "$COUNTRY implements a mandatory helmet law, do head injuries among cyclists go up or down?" -- bicycle helmets eit
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See:
Court of the Bleeding Obvious? (Score:4, Interesting)
To determine that by no reasonable standard could Verizon's customer service be considered reasonable?
Nice that they were stupid enough to pursue it to court - now their competitors can use the decision in their ads....
nice fine ! (Score:5, Interesting)
to top it all off the judge assessed a civil penalty of $1000 dollars against Verizon, as a deterrent for treating customers badly in the future !
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Development?
All CRS systems worth running have a comments section.
I'm sure there are some choice notations in there already.
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The judge should have taken into account verizon's size when he set the fine. It should have been MUCH higher, on the order of one million dollars or so. That might provide actual deterrence for verizon to engage in such activity. One grand isn't going to do shit to change verizon's behavior.
Well the woman did go to court herself over a $4 charge, so it might be small claims court. If that's the case I don't think a small claims court judge can hand out million dollar fines; $1,000 might be the limit in that jurisdiction.
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Read the story.
It was heard before the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. Which means it was heard by an Administrative Law Judge.
That judge would have the authority to hand down a huge fine but instead of a bitch slap, she waved her hand in the general direction of Verizon's wrist, and I'm sure there were chuckles all around over cheese and wine that very evening.
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One of the things the judge mentioned in the ruling is that this complaint appeared to be unique. In other words, nobody else bothered to complain about the same issue.
That should speak volumes about people who try to stand up for principles, as usually if there is a complaint like this there are hundreds of others who have experienced a similar problem. If it had been a recurring problem with Verizon, the judge stated that the penalty would have been much higher.
That is something which I would like to en
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Back in the days before long distance was so cheap, I used to buy it from Ameritech in 15 minute increments, with a two hour minimum. When I did not exceed my two hour allotment for many months, I decided to see if it would be cheaper to pay by the minute instead. I called customer service and asked how many total minutes o
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Suggested, not assessed.
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Sorry, it is assessed. From:
That within 30 days of the date of entry of the Commission’s Order in this case, Verizon Pennsylvania Inc. will remit a civil penalty in the amount of $1,000, payable by money order or certified check to:
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In addition the judge ordered them to cease and desist in violating section 1501 of the Public Utility Code which required them to provide information about charges. So they can't do this again.
BUT if they do, everybody gets to go to court all over again, at great time and expense.
The $1000 fine was merely an embarrassment to the green behind the ears lawyer they assigned to this case, management probably is entirely unaware of this issue, and they will probably continue to demand a subpoena because updati
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Yeah! Enough to be punitive, but not so much that they can cry that the damages were excessive. I suspect Verizon would make that much in about a minute, and their lawyers cost them more than that to go to court. Serves them right for being so dumb in the first place. Heh - it would probably cost them more than that to appeal.
It'll probably also cover this lady's phone bill for the next 5 years!
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to top it all off the judge assessed a civil penalty of $1000 dollars against Verizon, as a deterrent for treating customers badly in the future !
Chump change for Verizon... they should have fined them at least a couple million, with a warning that they were being lenient on this time, because it was a first offense.
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They didn't even bother sending their own lawyer.
Verizon was represented by one Mr William E. Lehman, Esquire, which google will reveal is a small potatoes lawyer who grosses (not Nets, grosses) less than 500k per year.
Here it is (Score:5, Funny)
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Legal fees: $25,000
Fine: $1,000
Loss of business: $130,000
Getting free publicity on slashdot: Priceless.
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To that I can only respond with an actual image of a Telecom New Zealand bill:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020218/login/bill.jpg [tribuneindia.com]
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They did, and it was. Read the ruling for the details.
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Did Verizon ask to see that fine itemized?
Fine for refusing to itemize bill: -$1000
Tax writeoff/deduction for administrative 'expenses' settling the matter: CR +$500
Federal tax credit for resolving issue and providing better customer service: CR +$1000
Customer monthly bill increase (carefully hidden in 'regulatory fees section': CR +$10
Amount Due: -$510.
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Read the judgement before commenting further - there were a total of 10 different factors used by the judge to weigh and adjust the civil penalty. Her situation being unique (rather than chronic), and the amount being small led to the judge approving an identical penalty to another similar case with a different defendant. This may seem like a pittance to fine them, but it puts
Like Pulling Teeth from Sprint (Score:3)
I tried to get Sprint to itemize a "sales tax" item on my company's bill (many mobile phones + 4G/WiFi hotspots) that added to about 17% (NY sales tax is about 8.5%). It took 2 months and several dozen emails through my dedicated account rep, two different divisions of Sprint, to finally get me the raw data in pieces that I put together and explained to them. It was legit, but they do charge a tax on a tax, which they're probably withholding from the government in a neverending lawsuit against "taxing taxes" while they collect interest.
The telco cartel runs the US. Except where some other cartel has staked its flag deeper.
Landlines (Score:2)
Sounds like a.. (Score:4, Funny)
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/sunglasses
Verizon is known for shitty billing problems (Score:2)
I have month after month of problems with Verizon Fios Billing.
It was finally sorted out after a good time, but they were charging me all kinds of things when I was told my bill would be a certain amount of month, and each month it was ridiculously different and incorrect and as they tried to fix it each month it get screwed up further.
In the end, I was credited for paying too much due to their stupid billing department... and the bill finally was what I was "SOLD" when I subscribed.
FIOS is a great service,
douchebag verizon (Score:2)
get iphone,act like at&t
This is the final nail in the coffin (Score:5, Interesting)
The order was created in the computer either by the checkout scanner or by the automated form on the website. The order was filled and shipped by an automated warehouse (In our warehouse, even the pallet trucks are tied into the system and automated. It's a little unnerving to see these unmanned trucks just whipping big pallets of raw materials and finished goods to and fro in the factory.). The invoice was automatically kicked out in a billing batch run and mailed. No human ever laid eyes on it or had any knowledge that your order ever existed.
Think about that.
It's not like you can call them up and complain to the person that made a certain determination. They hire people off the street to sit in the call center and read what's on the screen. If you owe $50, it's not because someone looked and evaluated the situation. It's because that's what the computer says you owe. If the computer had said $55 instead--THAT WOULD BE THE REALITY.
All that remains is for the computer to become the final arbiter. Not being able or allowed to question or even review the automated data is precisely how that will come about.
It's actually law in some countries.. (Score:3)
I must admit I'm a bit surprised. I know of several countries where it is mandatory for bills to contain enough information to check that they are accurate, so obfuscation and adding charges together under one header (for example "expenses"). can be challenged in court.
A company asking to take to court before they detail their bills is hiding something - this needs a MUCH deeper look.
Re:No one routinely gets a list of local calls (Score:5, Insightful)
The company just keeps track of the minutes, and one never got a list of local calls. this was true at least in the 1970s when I had measured service in CA. With unlimited local they don't report either.
Yes and no.
No, the company does *in fact* keep tack of every number you call.
And yes, normally you don't get a bill which itemizes local calls.
But none of this is the point.
This lady had a "customer service issue" where in she was disputing a charge. Verizon should be obligated to detail to any customer, on request, the nature of a charge. It's just that simple.
Now, Verizon has an "Itemized Bill Service" for which they charge, and it probably does cost them marginally more in computing and paper, but it's all there in their computers...
If I want ITEMIZED LOCAL CALLS on every bill, I might reasonable expect to pay a small fee.
But if I have a BILLING ISSUE, I expect them to pony up the data as a matter of doing business with me.
Fuck Verizon.
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If I want ITEMIZED LOCAL CALLS on every bill, I might reasonable expect to pay a small fee. But if I have a BILLING ISSUE, I expect them to pony up the data as a matter of doing business with me.
What happens if you decide you might have a billing "issue" with every bill?
Sometimes, certain customers can be just as unreasonable as the company's customer service
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yes, you have to deal with a few annoying customers as a cost of doing business, in every line of business. If your entire customer base is acting this way, then it is safe to assume that your competitor's customer base is pulling the same scam on you, and everyone raises rates together. The itemization becomes a basic service with no option to opt out of, the companies make this as efficient as they can over time, and the original profit margin pulled in by this service is not many multiples greater than o
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What happens if you decide you might have a billing "issue" with every bill?
The company then ceases to do business with you?
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Uh, what? I routinely get a list of all calls on all lines I have through T-Mobile. I can verify every charge if I so see fit.
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This is about verizon land-line service, not verizon mobile or t-mobile. They are different entities within the company.
Re:Bad Training - Stupid Use of Courts (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree that this was just bad customer service training, but since this actually made it to court, AND WAS CHALLENGED BY VERIZON, this tells me that it is a matter of corporate policy. Verizon wanted so bad to NOT give her an itemized bill, they paid lawyers to go to court to try to defend their behavior and lost.
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If it was handled in Small Claims Court, they may not have sent a lawyer. In many jurisdictions, you're not allowed to be represented by a lawyer in Small Claims Court. Also, it's possible that Verizon simply ignored the whole thing, in which case the lady may have won a default judgment.
I could probably find the answers to some of these questions by Reading The Fine Article, but I can't help feel that that's cheating. :)
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In many jurisdictions, you're not allowed to be represented by a lawyer in Small Claims Court.
I would imagine that a Corporate Entity would be allowed to be represented by a member of their Legal Department, since they ARE the representative of Verizon (when it comes to appearing in court), or do they expect the CEO to come out for a Small Claims issue? (or that Verizon should be unrepresented?)
As it was though (according to another poster), the court case was the Penn Utility Commission where the woman filed her complaint.
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If this were simply a case of bad training, why did the rep that Verizon sent also claim that the only way they would give any information about a past charge in response to a consumer inquiry was to require that customer hire a lawyer and subpoena their own usage information?
Bad training for their witness too?
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If they actually had decent customer service, that decision would have seemed so out of place that nearly any CSR would have questioned it and found out otherwise. The fact that it seemed consistent enough with other policies to not be questioned on Verizon's side says a LOT.
The fact that they actually went to the mat trying to maintain their no itemized bill decision shows that it was a lot more than just one CSR that believed it to be their policy (including their legal department). I'm guessing that if w
same call center that can't do basic math (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdKwRdWocco [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp6ccIiZp1Y [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v= [youtube.com]
http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
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Keep in mind what she did here wasn't to "clog the courts with a stupid case like this", she went to the public utility commission and filed a formal complaint. What happened was that after the complaint was filed, Verizon dismissed the complaint and moved the issue up the food chain, which was an administrative law judge who hears complaints being made through the utility commission.
She did exactly as you claimed that somebody ought to do here, and since Verizon objected to the complaint, it went to court
Goes well beyond call centers. (Score:5, Informative)
I left Verizon Wireless in the late '90s precisely because they were billing me for things that I couldn't identify and that they wouldn't itemize.
Let me tell you how "leaving them" worked out for me. After lots of attempts to get them to itemize, I just paid everything and said cancel (my initial agreement period was over and I was on monthly). Then, I got a bill from them the next month—for the same monthly service, including things they wouldn't itemize, as before. I called them up.
Me: WTF? I quit last month and paid off.
Them: Yes, but you re-opened your account.
Me: WTF? How did I do that? I haven't talked to you since then.
Them: We don't know. But there is this charge that you incurred that means you continued to use the service.
Me: How did I incur the charge? That sounds like the same amount I was asking about before?
Them: Must have been local calls or sth. We can't tell you. But it's there. So your bill / account is back also. You owe for the month.
Me: But I threw away the VZW phones, like, three weeks ago!
Them: Sorry. Pay up.
Me: Get your supervisor.
Song and dance, yadda yadda, I ended up giving in, paying off the month again, and cancelling again.
Next month, WHAT DO YOU KNOW, another VZW bill lands in my mailbox for monthly service AS USUAL.
I called again, same song and dance, only this time I also wrote a letter to corporate describing the sequence of events and suggesting that I was ready to take legal action. Then the retention department or someone behaving like a retention department called me and asked if I didn't really want to stay. I was so livid my head nearly exploded. Then, finally, this last person agreed to cancel me and I stayed cancelled...
Until I got a COLLECTIONS LETTER for another VZW monthly amount. At first I refused to pay in case it was going to go this way every month again, but when two or three months had passed and just that one charge seemed to be left, I paid the collections bill and that was the end of it.
But you'll never get me to go back to VZW unless every other telecom has been carpet-bombed. Even then, I might prefer tin cans and strings to VZW.
Re:Goes well beyond call centers. (Score:4, Informative)
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Nice job paying a collections bill that you didn't even owe. Your credit got destroyed, you gave the company exactly what they wanted, and after that was over I bet they sent you yet another bill. If they haven't yet, they will now that they know you're an easy mark.
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This is talking about the US so there are two answers possible. It's not the first time I see a question like yours pop up.
1) No, there is no alternative (and that's for many people there apparently the reality, unbelievable as it sounds), or:
The alternatives are as bad/even worse.
Welcome to the free market, right?
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So Walmart undercut Walgreens on a product they don't sell? That's some serious wizardry there...