Finally, Verizon can hear us now! As incredible as it seems Verizon is listening. After drawing fire from the FCC and very mad customers, they are dropping the ridiculous fee. No word yet on if and when the base service fee will go up.
Bob Ingalls, chief marketing officer of Verizon came out with a blend press release on how purely coincidental the surcharge being added right as the USF fee is now removed.
From the good folks who brought the regrouping of Verizon after its dismantlement thirty years ago, they are now very upset with Verizon passing on the buck to consumers. It’s nice to hear the FCC is there to voice concern. Now if they could only act on it instead of letting these monopolies be…
Following the insidious Verizon fee that replaces the ousted tax, BellSouth says it will drop the same fee. For Verizon, the word is mum.
The FCC is preparing to launch a formal inquiry to look into Verizon and BellSouth continuing charging DSL customers for a Universal Service Fund fee the U.S. government is no longer requiring and masking it as a fee to help them better fight against other companies. Yes, I know, what other companies?
Kevin Martin, the FCC Chairman was "very upset" by the companies’ plans to keep the money. We do hope his being upset solves the situation.
Verizon has used many different stories ranging from vague need of help competing with other carriers, helping pay for new technologies, etc but never actually explaining anything in details. The greedy monopoly keeps on getting greedier and as long as no one raises a stink, why not? In pure marketing strategy, the company did not explain why it wouldn’t raise the base price of its service instead.
The FCC also intends to ask why the companies are imposing the surcharge both to customers subscribing to just DSL, as well as those who additionally pay for phone service.
What would we do without the FCC. No wait! Aren’t they the ones who allowed Verizon in the first place by saying it would help the industry. I must be sitting on the wrong side of the fence somehow.
The second quarter California foreclosure activity rose to the fastest over the past 14 years.
Lenders sent 10.5 percent more default notices to homeowners statewide during the April-through-June period according to DataQuick. Yet, despite the bump in the second quarter, they remained below normal levels.
This is an interesting trend to watch. Does it mean the increase was because the number of defaults had been so low before? People have a harder time to back their mortgage and can be forced to sell their homes to pay off the lender.
The high amount of equity owners have in their homes, the different types of mortgages and how long the mortgage has been held all influence greatly the foreclosure market.
Interestingly enough, foreclosure activity was low during the third quarter of 2004 when that year California home prices rose at 20 percent. And today’s foreclosures are about one-third of the peak level in the first quarter of 1996. It isn’t as bad as the media makes it out to be.
Click here for BetaNews.
Click here for the BetaNews brief.
Most numbers were taken from Calculated Risk.