Paying Not to Have Long Distance?
September 12, 2007 by Karen Weideman
Filed under financial matters
Phone companies have thought up yet another way to get money out of you. Verizon is starting to play AT&T’s dirty tricks by charging customers a fee for long distance even if you don’t use it.
What?
I remember years ago when I had a land line, the companies were trying to charge me an $8 a month long distance fee for their service, even though I wasn’t making any long distance calls through them. (I was using a 10-10 number through a separate company.)
Then AT&T got really sneaky and switched me over to them as my long distance carrier WITHOUT my permission and charged me a monthly fee. After a bit of time on the phone with them, I finally had to put a long distance block on my phone so that no one could switch me without my written consent. I think they thought people wouldn’t notice, they’d think it was ok, or they weren’t willing to fight about it. Not me!
Now they’re charging NOT to have long distance!?!?!
The Verizon fee is a couple dollars a month, but AT&T has been charging people $3-5 dollars a month not to use long distance. Needless to say, this charge comes from them losing long distance power with people now using cell phones, calling cards, or internet/phone companies to make long distance calls.
My hubby and I had our land line disconnected about 3 years ago. We didn’t use it much and it seemed that most of the calls we were getting were irrelevant. Since then, we haven’t had any telemarketers call us. It’s wonderful!
If you have a land line, you should check your phone bill for unnecessary charges. If you have older parents, you should check their bills as well. You can also try to enroll them in Lifeline, a more affordable tariff-rated service that seniors can get. Also be aware that if your parents have been in same residence since the early ’80s, they may be paying a lease for telephones they had back then. Those fees could cumulatively amount to thousands of dollars.
Thanks to Clark Howard for the tips.
Do you still have a land line? Have you broken free?
Thanks for the head’s up! We haven’t gotten charged for not having long distance yet, and if we ever do, I’ll be canceling my landline! That’s terrible!
My wife and I shed our land-line two years ago and haven’t looked back since. I was paying Verizon $50 a month for local alone. We used a 3rd party long distance service that offered 3 or 4 cents a minute long distance which was much better than anything the large name telcos offered at the time. After paying Verizon for services such as Call Intercept, my phone still rang every 20 minutes all day long with unsolicited calls. I finally realized that nobody I wanted to talk to was calling me on the land line, so I was paying Verizon $50 a month for an open conduit for telemarketers. I do not miss Verizon’s land line service one bit.
Sigh.
I’ve paid Qwest $2 a month for years now, just to NOT have long distance.
This was after discovering that teen age girls in love can NOT be trusted (a) not to use long distance with their beloved is in another city; or (b) not to accept collect calls from said beloved.
The beloveds change. Teen girls and Qwest do not!
Yes, I still have a landline. I don’t yet trust VoIP in case of emergency (but use Skype for my long distance calling).
I have a long distance plan, but up until last month that was free for the higher per minute fee I was accepting (since I didn’t use it, what did I care what the per minute charge was).
Suddenly (and without notification) that plan went to $3/month.
I still have my landline, but it is getting harder by the day to continue to justify it just in case of an emergency.
It was hard for me to make the break from a landline. Somedays I do get concerned about what I will do if an emergency comes. I do live in a neighborhood though and have retired older neighbors all around me. I know I could use their phone.
BTW, they have a lot of nerve to charge you without even notifying you of a change.
I’m sure that a lot of people haven’t noticed that and were paying that fee for nothing. But that company received their money.
When we broke with our landline, I often had people ask me about “worst case scenarios”. I was asked what I would do if some sort of emergency knocked out all the cell towers and the cable modem and someone in my family was in need of medical assistance. I reasoned that in a scenario that drastic, I doubt an ambulance could make it to my house in the first place. Of course, I also have a Ham radio license, which I don’t really use, but I could fall back on that if need be.