Not to defend ISPs too much, but I will say that it will be more difficult to quote prices than many expect.
I used to work for CenturyLink in customer support. I’d have callers from 20 different states, and thousands of municipalities. Each and every one of those municipalities had different rates depending on the services. One town would have a franchise utility agreement that has the City tacking on 2% in trade for granting right of ways. Another would have a $11 monthly 911 service fee applied to everything (911 still has to work on DSL so even internet-onlu customers had to pay it), where another might have a 50 cent fee. Everywhere was different, and any number of these fees was subject to change.
Something like a franchise agreement might not move with a fiscal year, or the city ordinance may have had a flat fee that was divided amongst the number of customers. We’d have a fixed rate for a service, but due to the constantly-changing fees the customer may have a different bill every month of the year.
Giving a precise quote in those circumstances was pretty much impossible. Our computer systems weren’t logged into some kind of live fee database of every state, county, and municipal government in the country.
In my job right now I establish fees for municipal government. There’s been some fuckery at the state level so that even I - the person in charge of setting the fees - can’t tell you what a permit will cost in 2 weeks. And my new fees that I have to pull out of my ass will directly affect the franchise fee rates for telecom providers, which is one of those variable fees we all hate.
The truth is Spectrum and Frontier legitimately won’t know what to charge the customers in my town until they’re sending the bill.
Those sound like internal complications of doing business. A well designed software system could solve a lot of those issues. That’s not the consumers problem. Especially when prices are high. If they want to charge fees instead of flat rates they need to say what they are.
That’s like a store that won’t tell you the price of anything until you buy it. Or a hospital lol for some reason we let that one slip
I think a store is a bad comparison since you are outright purchasing a good from said store, not purchasing a service subscription provided by and entirely managed by the store
But the price of the service isn’t managed by the store in this case. The ISPs have no control over costs associated with compliance with local ordinances.
This isn’t something where they can negotiate with a supplier to control costs. If the local government changes a fee, they have to comply, and sometimes that compliance requires a fee change.
We got screwed by a new state law that is cutting millions a year in certain commercial fees for my little town (because commercial developers own state legislatures) so we’re massively changing all our other fees to offset that hit.
My new proposed fee schedule is being announced on the 25th, voted in on the 29th, and go into effect the 1st. It’s literally impossible for the ISP to know what they’ll need to bill customers 2 weeks from now.
Oh, and we have another fee change coming the next month because the fiscal year changes, so it’s going to change twice in 2 months.
I’ll be the first to say ISPs suck. But this is not a simple problem to solve without simply increasing every bill by 30 bucks a month to build a buffer in case the local jurisdiction does something unexpected.
It may be more difficult than a relatively static price, but if they can figure out how to charge it, they can figure out how to display it. Any ISP sites I’ve used have you put in zip code anyway to view services. There’s no reason they can’t set it up to show the exact fee rates per area. I know you said you’re not defending them, but “it’s hard” isn’t really an excuse.
I’ve had CenturyLink (this time) for 7 years and for the entirety of that time I’ve been on a flat rate plan that is the same charge every month with all taxes and fees included.
Not to defend ISPs too much, but I will say that it will be more difficult to quote prices than many expect.
I used to work for CenturyLink in customer support. I’d have callers from 20 different states, and thousands of municipalities. Each and every one of those municipalities had different rates depending on the services. One town would have a franchise utility agreement that has the City tacking on 2% in trade for granting right of ways. Another would have a $11 monthly 911 service fee applied to everything (911 still has to work on DSL so even internet-onlu customers had to pay it), where another might have a 50 cent fee. Everywhere was different, and any number of these fees was subject to change.
Something like a franchise agreement might not move with a fiscal year, or the city ordinance may have had a flat fee that was divided amongst the number of customers. We’d have a fixed rate for a service, but due to the constantly-changing fees the customer may have a different bill every month of the year.
Giving a precise quote in those circumstances was pretty much impossible. Our computer systems weren’t logged into some kind of live fee database of every state, county, and municipal government in the country.
In my job right now I establish fees for municipal government. There’s been some fuckery at the state level so that even I - the person in charge of setting the fees - can’t tell you what a permit will cost in 2 weeks. And my new fees that I have to pull out of my ass will directly affect the franchise fee rates for telecom providers, which is one of those variable fees we all hate.
The truth is Spectrum and Frontier legitimately won’t know what to charge the customers in my town until they’re sending the bill.
Those sound like internal complications of doing business. A well designed software system could solve a lot of those issues. That’s not the consumers problem. Especially when prices are high. If they want to charge fees instead of flat rates they need to say what they are.
That’s like a store that won’t tell you the price of anything until you buy it. Or a hospital lol for some reason we let that one slip
I REALLY hate it when websites won’t tell you the true price until you go through the whole checkout process
When you go to the store, the cashier doesn’t say “come back in 3 months for the same price.”
I think a store is a bad comparison since you are outright purchasing a good from said store, not purchasing a service subscription provided by and entirely managed by the store
But the price of the service isn’t managed by the store in this case. The ISPs have no control over costs associated with compliance with local ordinances.
This isn’t something where they can negotiate with a supplier to control costs. If the local government changes a fee, they have to comply, and sometimes that compliance requires a fee change.
We got screwed by a new state law that is cutting millions a year in certain commercial fees for my little town (because commercial developers own state legislatures) so we’re massively changing all our other fees to offset that hit.
My new proposed fee schedule is being announced on the 25th, voted in on the 29th, and go into effect the 1st. It’s literally impossible for the ISP to know what they’ll need to bill customers 2 weeks from now.
Oh, and we have another fee change coming the next month because the fiscal year changes, so it’s going to change twice in 2 months.
I’ll be the first to say ISPs suck. But this is not a simple problem to solve without simply increasing every bill by 30 bucks a month to build a buffer in case the local jurisdiction does something unexpected.
It may be more difficult than a relatively static price, but if they can figure out how to charge it, they can figure out how to display it. Any ISP sites I’ve used have you put in zip code anyway to view services. There’s no reason they can’t set it up to show the exact fee rates per area. I know you said you’re not defending them, but “it’s hard” isn’t really an excuse.
I’ve had CenturyLink (this time) for 7 years and for the entirety of that time I’ve been on a flat rate plan that is the same charge every month with all taxes and fees included.
I can’t imagine how this needs to be difficult.