When we moved in to our new house in 1999, we asked Qwest (then known as US West) to install our phone service, since we had them in our old house. We needed 2 lines put in, since at the time, we had dial-up internet access.
When we got our bill, we found out that not only did they charge us the full $40 for EACH line (it took the guy an extra 2 minutes to hook up the second one), but they ALSO charged us an extra $106.60 since we were in a "new area"!
I was very upset about this, because we were not told about the additional charge before we received our first bill. My point was, what if we went with Cox instead of Qwest - would they still have sent us the bill for $106.60? I got to talk to two people, and both adopted a dictatorial attitude that they were a regulated agency, they were allowed to charge us that amount (yeah, without TELLING us first?), we'd get service charges if we didn't pay, and eventually they'd send it to collection.
We went ahead and paid, but had switched our house to Cox by the next month. (THEY only charged us one low fee for BOTH lines to be installed, and there were NO "surprise" charges.)
I've told a number of people about this, and they've switched to Cox or to just cell phones. Qwest has lost much more than the $106.60 that they extorted out of me, but there's a principal involved - and how many OTHER people did they rip off the same way???
0 comments