Unlisted-Number Cost Challenged

from the unfair dept

There are plenty of reasons to complain about fees on your telephone bill, but the one that seems to annoy the people the most is the "unlisted number fee". I pay it, though I'm annoyed that I have to, and it has kept my phone line mostly free of telemarketers. Now, someone is fighting back and is starting a "campaign" to get the charges reduced or ditched altogether. His phone service is provided by Qwest which seems to charge about four or five times as much as I have to pay. The main argument on this is why should it cost a couple of bucks a month to have your number not listed? All they need to do is... wait... nothing. Even if the number is already in a list, they just need to delete it once. Nothing needs to be done every month, so there's no justification for paying a monthly service fee for them to not do something.

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..


If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1.  

    Justification for charge

    identicon
    Doug, Jan 8th, 2003 @ 10:28am

    Unlisted numbers reduce the value of the telemarketing lists that they sell. The fee offsets that lost income.

    I found a simpler solution. I ditched my home phone entirely. Cable modem for Internet access beats DSL and dial-up, and my cell phone handles my voice needs just fine (with free national long distance).

    Also, not having a landline phone reduces the number of clueless telecom monopolies that I have to deal with.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>


A word from our Sponsors...
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss
From the Techdirt Archive...
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This