At the mercy of The Inscrutable Verizon and telecom itself

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: September 13, 2008 12:28:14 AM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'Doc Searls'" <doc () searls com>, "'Open  
Infrastructure Alliance'" <oia () lists bway net>
Subject: At the mercy of The Inscrutable Verizon and telecom itself

I just got off the phone after two hours speaking to Verizon Wireless  
and I did get about $1000 in credits but I can’t be sure.

The specifics of the dispute aren’t that special – in February I tried  
to cancel two lines I wasn’t using but they put into “billable  
suspend” instead and in June I discovered one of my sons happened to  
run over the account “minutes” and the other had $500 in data charges  
on what should’ve been an unlimited line …

On this last call I asked if I could get a “written” (email or  
whatever) summary of what issues they are resolving and the amounts  
involved etc. The answer was a flat no – the only information they  
were able to provide was orally over the phone and in the runes on  
their next billing statements which are formatted for printing and not  
analysis and without full explanation for charges and credits. (As an  
aside, some transactions are completely separate as when buying a  
phone using a credit card).

The problem was exacerbated because I had (naively) signed up for  
their “One-Bill®” service and it could take two months or more for  
information to meander from Verizon Wireless to one bill which, I was  
told today, is operated by Verizon Wireless. It doesn’t help that  
standard Verizon support is a 9-6 operation though VZW, the cash cow,  
does have longer hours. At this point the One Bill statement shows  
charges from VZW but apparently there is no mechanism, once I’ve  
severed the connection, for those credits ever to appear on the One- 
Bill® statement and no mechanism for dealing with that issue!! What a  
fine mess!

At two hours I finally gave up and let them do whatever with the last  
few dollars because I was told that their records showed that I had  
asked for suspend despite the many errors that were a consequences of  
that first error! In fact, I was also told that the used the sheer  
number of errors as “proof” that I was asking for too much!

Disputes with customer support aren’t that unusual but I consider  
telecom a special case because it’s about our very ability to  
communicate – something that should be a right not luxury. My choices  
are slim – RCN immediately sold me to a harassment house to collect a  
bill in dispute and a few months later after much grief sent me the  
refund after I’d given up and paid them off! And Comcast with its  
arbitrary caps and the lack of transparency …

Part of the problem is the industry itself. Why do I need to be  
constantly vigilant in case an account over its “minutes” or other  
tripwire? Why do I have to search the bills for charges I don’t even  
know exist or might’ve forgotten. The $500 data charge was due to  
Verizon’s confusion in move a the “data plan” plan to the wrong “phone  
number” – one that I’d tried to disconnect! What if I’m not checking  
in constantly and using auto-payment? Or what if I don’t notice the  
extra minutes until after the end of the billing period I could, and  
have been hit for hundreds of dollars in charges because I lost the  
bet against the house. It doesn’t help that the bill can be a 16 page  
PDF file.

These problems are endemic in the current model of telephony. How  
could I protect a relative with bipolar disorder who dialed operator- 
assisted international calls one month and ran up $1000 in charges for  
what would have cost a few dollars had she been on the right  
international plan and dialed direct or cost nothing over VoIP?. How  
do people even know about all these plans?

Since the services and prices have only a tenuous basis in reality  
they are by nature perverse. And there are traps everywhere. You  
change a plan and discover that a byproduct is that you’ve re-upped  
for another two years! Your (US) domestic flight makes an emergency  
landing in Toronto (as one of mine did) and suddenly you’re paying  
international rates – and worse if you’re phone happened to be running  
an application that fetched map data in the background!

What makes this especially painful is that if we didn’t have telecom  
companies in the middle there wouldn’t be any reason to limit the  
connection to a single modality. You could have a shared status window  
and collaborate on items under discussion thus reducing the errors and  
at last clarifying the disputes. Verizon does have chat support but it  
doesn’t have voice (or data). Putting the disparate features together  
is hard though I argue doing them together is far easier and more  
straightforward.

With the control of the call and connection in user space you would be  
able to do your own spam and filter marketing calls (AKA spam) and  
have triggers for out of range events. I would also expect Caller-ID  
to be subsumed by messaging. But these improvements are another topic  
in their own right.

Of course Verizon is trying to add features such as the ability to let  
me look at my call log online but, well, it’s wanting. It seems to  
deal with just one of my lines but I did look forward to the ability  
to add entries to may address book in hopes that it would use it  
assist in creating the illusion of Caller-ID by name but no luck – the  
calls are still marked unknown. We see the same problems with their  
EPG foibles for FiOS TV – did anyone check the placements to avoid  
chopping off the list of the actors in the movie? As a programmer I  
actually find some of the race conditions in their STB software  
amusing but that’s small consolation. At least it doesn’t crash as  
often as Comcast.

Back to the conversation with support. After I had switched from one  
support person to another (apparently terminating a line on the  
account is done by a different department) the first person called me  
back on another line (with a caller ID showing the number but not  
“Verizon” even though it was my Verizon line) but I couldn’t merge the  
calls or do much better than holding a phone to each ear. One line was  
my VoIP line in my third floor office and the other my VZ line with  
the base station on the first floor. I have separate phones because  
cordless phones have regressed so I have to get the call in a single  
hop from the base station and even at 5.8Mhz the results are mixed at  
best. If I had an IP phone I could have done my own relaying but that  
market is still in the future (though with Asterisk I may be able to  
DIY it had I the time for one more project).

The experience is also a reminder of a flaw in the idea of number  
portability. One reason I keep the VoIP line is that I can have the  
call ring on multiple lines. The VZW number I tried to remove is two  
generations back – I “switched” to T-Mobile and now have a ATT cell- 
phone. I put switched in quotes because I overlap the services and  
sometimes switch between them. Portability doesn’t have that concept.  
The number is associated with a single device as if I am the device.  
Again, were it not for phone companies I would be able to process the  
calls myself and separate the number from the end-point as Skype does.  
Though I can give out the VoIP number for finding me SMS is still tied  
to the cellular number and doesn’t support forwarding or any  
enhancement.

One final comment on telephony – I’m going to be traveling to China  
next month and the Amazon Kindle is a nice way to carry books to read  
en route. But I better load it up now for once I’m beyond the reach of  
the Sprint cellular network I’m out of touch. Too bad – it would’ve  
been nice for my newspaper subscription to work while traveling. And  
these problems are world wide – can I even buy an “unlimited” data  
plan in China?

As I wrote recently I’m glad to see Congressman Kohl starting to ask  
questions about SMS charges. What is disappointing is that the problem  
is so much more than overbilling – the problem is in the damage done  
by limiting ourselves to telephony as envisioned in the 19th century  
and then guzzied up with digital gewgaws and buried beneath a myriad  
of billable services.

What frustrates me is that these problems feed upon each other within  
the Regulatorium yet if you step outside the arbitrary distinctions  
that prevent solutions simply vanish. So, once again, I find myself  
asking why we seem so intent to inflict these problems upon ourselves?





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