Re: Level3 tries cell-phone style billing scam on customers

* Patrick W. Gilmore · * Thu Jul 31 15:34:12 2008

On Jul 31, 2008, at 3:28 PM, Jamie A Lawrence wrote:

On Jul 31, 2008, at 2:45 PM, Gadi Evron wrote:
Isn't malicious, just not very ethical. Having been on the
recieving end a few times.. you don't always know it is happening.

I'm not sure that's a useful distinction. I strongly doubt any
vendor has actual malice towards me (modulo some people I've pissed
off at times in panics). Ethics are what I hope for from partners,
try to demonstrate, and it is proven over time.
That said, inventing random fees, hiding them as "taxes" or
"federally mandated something or other", and seeing what sticks to
the wall in order to get that tiny percent profit boost is not going
to make any friends in a network community. It works much better
with cell customers or unaware bean counters, but netops folks are
going to see it. L3 have given me reason to not like them in the
past, and this is just more of the same. The problem is that the big
boys seem to be racing to the bottom, so there isn't anyone better
to which to defect.

Calling something a "tax" or "federally mandated" when it is not
sounds both like a class action suit waiting to happen, and illegal
enough to have the company at least fined.
Why doesn't Cuomo go after problems like this instead of the BS he
likes to chase. It's got to have an appeal to at least as many people
who vote.
--
TTFN,
patrick