Aww … poor little ISPs.

  • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This is why the ISPs don’t want to do it. The FCC told them:

    Providers are free, of course, to not pass these fees through to consumers to differentiate their pricing and simplify their Label display if they believe it will make their service more attractive to consumers and ensure that consumers are not surprised by unexpected charges.

    The ISPs refuse to eat the costs of doing business. They know people will shit when they see all the fees that customers do not need to pay are being charged to them.

    There will be lawsuits when the fees are listed.

    • Album@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      It’s not really about eating the costs of doing business. A restaurant doesn’t charge you $1 at the end of your bill for washing your fork, it’s just part of the cost of serving the dish and so your Salmon Rice dish is $18 not $17.

      The point is that the listed prices for services should either have these fees be built right into the price…as pretty much all businesses do…or if you’re going to put it at the end of the bill then it needs to be clearly defined per FCC.

      It’s a transparency problem. Not only is your $60 cell phone bill not actually $60 but then they also don’t tell you about the additional fees very well when they tack them on at the end. It’s gotta be one or the other, not neither.

      • wklink@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Restaurants also don’t have a line item on their bill to make you pay for their anti-unionization efforts. ISPs, on the other hand, do often have a “regulatory recovery fee,” the purpose of which is to pay their lobbyists to fight regulators so they can continue to screw you.

      • knotthatone@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        An increasing number of restaurants are pulling exactly this sort of bullshit–little 3.5% fees at the bottom of the total check disclosed only in fine print on the menu (if at all) tied to COVID, paying their staff, processing credit cards, etc. It needs to end. Pricing should be upfront so customers can compare what they’re actually paying, not snuck in at the end.

      • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Why does everyone try to prove everyone else wrong? That entire first paragraph is completely unnecessary. You can simply add to a discussion without being "well actually " about some detail you want to nitpick. The other two paragraphs are spot on.

        • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Because it’s a meaningful distinction. The issue isn’t them passing the cost to their customers. It’s them lying about their prices instead of telling you what they’re going to charge you.

          • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            They government is charging them those fees. And the government has said that they do not need to pass those fees onto the customer.

            In order to operate they must pay those fees. They do not need to charge the customer those fees. But they do anyways.

            Thus, they are passing the cost of doing business onto the customer.

            Read the quoted text.

            Is it the only issue? No. It is part of the issue. And the FCC called them out on it.

            • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              They will literally always pass all of their costs of doing business to their customers. That’s what businesses are and it is impossible to function any other way.

              It is not in any way part of the issue. There is exactly one issue here. It’s adding these fees on top of the price you advertised to the customer with absolutely zero way for the customer to find out the actual price they’ll be charged. That’s the only thing the FCC cares about here and the entire issue. Anything else is a lie and a misdirection.

        • Album@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Not trying to prove you or anyone else wrong… that’s a really odd and unnecessarily defensive take.

          It’s just a discussion.

          • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I like to imagine people doing that in an every day conversation. It’s ridiculous. No one would ever talk to them lol

            • SimpleDev@infosec.pub
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              1 year ago

              Seems like a friendly enough response was given to your comment and you automatically assumed they were only interested in saying you’re wrong.

              Having a discussion is not “proving everyone wrong”

              • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Especially when they were wrong. They’re obviously going to pass along any actual cost they have one way or another.

                That’s not what’s shady or what’s being addressed. It’s the $60 ***(plus $100 in unlisted fees we literally won’t even let our support provide or estimate on signup) to lie about prices that’s the problem.

                  • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    I did. “Passing on costs” is entirely irrelevant to everything.

                    The entire point of all of this is that service providers are using nebulous fee structures to lie about pricing. That’s the entire thing. There is nothing else.

                • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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                  1 year ago

                  No, that’s fair. But also, when you’re conversing in “real life”, people probably aren’t paying that much attention to every word you say and don’t care enough to “nitpick”.

    • Wisens@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Difficulty doesn’t make sense, because if they can charge you for it, then they can list it out on your bill.

      Unless it’s a “we need to show profit growth to our shareholders” fee.