> Having the individual fees listed feels important to me for two reasons: one, to allow customers who are so inclined to check for any calculation errors, as a safeguard against accidental or intentional overcharging by the ISP
Aren’t there stories in the news regularly about ISPs adding additional “fuck you” fees just because they can? So this does not seem to be working. At the end of the day, when I buy a beer I don’t care that €0.20 is going to their administrative overhead and €1.28 to their installations’ maintenance. That is not supposed to be the customer’s problem.
> and two, so that customers who want to lobby their elected officials to reduce or eliminate any of the charges can identify the specific charges applicable and each of their amounts, without which no meaningful political activism is possible.
This does not seem to be working well either. And at the same time, other countries without this issue seem to be doing fine with their broadband prices. It looks very ridiculous from the outside, in any case.
> Aren’t there stories in the news regularly about ISPs adding additional “fuck you” fees just because they can? So this does not seem to be working. At the end of the day, when I buy a beer I don’t care that €0.20 is going to their administrative overhead and €1.28 to their installations’ maintenance. That is not supposed to be the customer’s problem.
Yes they do sometimes add their own fees like you say. But those are usually clear flat amounts per line per month, so calculation of that is easy enough. It’s still worthwhile for customers to be able to catch accidental or intentional overcharges versus their published fee schedule, since that ability is part of what keeps companies relatively diligent and honest in this area. Widespread mistakes can and do lead to class action lawsuits or easy boilerplate individual arbitrations or government investigations, in the US.
Additionally, some customers qualify for exemptions or reductions for certain governmentally imposed fees. Transparency as to what is being charged is important to make it easy to notice whether this kind of exemption is or isn’t being applied.
Aren’t there stories in the news regularly about ISPs adding additional “fuck you” fees just because they can? So this does not seem to be working. At the end of the day, when I buy a beer I don’t care that €0.20 is going to their administrative overhead and €1.28 to their installations’ maintenance. That is not supposed to be the customer’s problem.
> and two, so that customers who want to lobby their elected officials to reduce or eliminate any of the charges can identify the specific charges applicable and each of their amounts, without which no meaningful political activism is possible.
This does not seem to be working well either. And at the same time, other countries without this issue seem to be doing fine with their broadband prices. It looks very ridiculous from the outside, in any case.