911 On A Data Card?

Ah, back to cell phone service... the never ending complaint of my blog. CellularOne was great to me, aside from minor complaints. Alltel isn't bad, (though BlackBerrys have potentially deadly flaws). I sure can't complain about my Alltel bill compared to other service providers. But, recently, I have started to notice something not quite right with my Alltel bill.

First, the practice of fees that aren't taxes is ethically questionable in the first place. My Alltel bill has several of them:

$1.70 "Regulatory and Admin Fee" - "This fee helps Alltel recover costs incurred by the company to provide government mandated services and complete calls to and from other carriers' networks. This fee is set by Alltel and is not a tax required by law."

$0.35 "E911 Carrier Cost Recovery" - "This fee is charged by Alltel to recover its costs associated with the construction, maintenance and upgrades of 911 services and related facilities on its network not otherwise reimbursed through state or local E-911 funds. This is not a tax required by law."

There's $2.05 in "not a tax required by law" fees that are buried in fine print and not in the advertised price. Why doesn't that violate any truth in advertising laws? Additionally, there is a ten cent "deaf surcharge" that has no description relating to who is charging that.

But, that's not why I write today. We've all known for a long time that carriers unethically bury the costs of doing business in hidden fees instead of raising advertised prices. What they don't mention is that these fees are PER LINE. That means that each $9.99 add-a-line has $2.05 in non-tax fees (plus a $1.00 State/Local 911 fee, a $0.10 deaf surcharge, and Federal USF contribution). The result? Each additional line is much closer to $15 than it is to $10.

However, the one that's REALLY getting to me is that I have a *data card* line - provisioned only for the data card with no voice or SMS services whatsoever. Yet, it's still charged the $1.00 State/Local 911 Fee, the $0.35 "E911 Carrier Cost Recovery" fee, and the $0.10 "Deaf Surcharge."

I'm paying $1.45 for 911 and TDD (Telephone Device for the Deaf) fees on a product that could never call 911. That goes beyond normal business practice and into the realm of completely unethical. Maybe I should be able to sue if I get stuck somewhere and only have my data card and can't call 911 on it - after all, I did pay for that service :-) .

So, I did what all consumers should do when they're upset about these practices, I filed a complaint with the FCC. Today I got a phone call from a gentleman whose name I cannot remember in executive relations. He had a bit of an attitude and said if I don't like it, I should write to my state congress encouraging them to pass a law to ban these fees. He said "the state of Montana allows us to charge those fees." That just got to me. He also said "we don't differentiate between a data line and a phone line" - well, they sure do on pricing. My data line is about $40/month - a normal phone line is about $10/month.

What's next? I think I'll take the Alltel representative's advice and write to my state and federal representatives urging them to pass laws putting a stop to these unethical billing practices once and for all.