Stop the Cap! reader Bob, who gave Frontier Communications another shot for his broadband needs, finally threw in the towel and went back to Time Warner Cable when he got his current bill.  B0b was happy enough with his DSL service, despite the nagging sense DSL is really losing the speed race, with an increasingly growing gap between the fastest speed Frontier can offer vs. Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner service.  But the final straw came in this month’s bill.  It was messed up, and it turned out Frontier’s DSL was more expensive than Time Warner’s Road Runner, once taxes and fees were counted.

A Frontier Billing Mystery Sherlock Holmes Couldn't Solve

Welcome to my world.  I’m still dealing with billing nightmares prompted from my own test run of Frontier’s DSL “High Speed Internet Max” product, which wasn’t “High Speed” (maximum speed here was 3.1Mbps) and “Max” in giving me headaches because of the need to make repeated calls to the company to straighten out service and billing problems, which still aren’t fixed.

Frontier just sent its employees another one of those taunt-0-gram e-mails at Time Warner Cable’s expense, telling employees:

Time Warner continues to execute a seriously customer-unfriendly strategy for managing the pressure they feel from their customers’ usage of broadband services.

More proof that Time Warner is just focused on how to add PRICE INCREASES to their High-Speed services; Frontier’s focus has never wavered – we ADD VALUE for our customers.

I actually agree with most of that, and would be on board except for the Excedrin-size headache created by Frontier’s customer service in DeLand, Florida.  They’re confused about their own products and services and are prone to making lots of mistakes processing orders and requests.

Before taking shots at TWC, let’s get one’s own house in order first.

Product Descriptions and Disclosures: Can Someone Get Them Right?

Frontier continues to have a big problem is providing consistent information to customers about what is required to participate in promotions, when price protection agreements apply and when they don’t (and allowing customers to opt out up front), and correctly disclosing the actual out the door pricing for products.

Both Bob and I discovered, to our chagrin, that the prices quoted by Customer Service Representatives didn’t correspond with the actual billed charges.  They never quote taxes and fees, which add substantially to the bottom line price.  They don’t routinely volunteer that there is a “modem rental fee” for DSL service that pads several dollars to your bill each month.  Credits often require a representative to manually apply them, and hope they actually go through.

In Bob’s case, he was quoted a monthly fee of $29.99 for his DSL service, but was billed $34.99, and after all of the taxes and fees were applied, it amounted to well over $40.00.  In fact, the final out the door price was literally higher than what TWC charged for Road Runner.

He was also billed for a $34.99 installation fee he was promised would be waived, among other mystery charges that a representative later told him were “in error.”

But after confusion like that, he had enough and elected to head back to Time Warner Cable.  Frontier didn’t like that news one bit:

She said that they might now have to bill me for the installation and I told her no way. I was told when I ordered the service that the installation would be removed from my first bill and it was once I called the person that I originally ordered the service from. I told the representative Monday that they had better not bill me for the install because I had a 30 day grace period and was never told that the installation would be charged to me if I did not then commit to a one year deal  (I had until June 10th to cancel.)

In my case, I was overbilled by more than $60.00 the month prior because promotions were incorrectly applied, and the person who processed our order ended up charging us a-la-carte for every phone feature on our account, instead of properly entering the correct “bundle” package.  It’s frightening getting a phone bill for $111.  Manual credits had to be applied for wi-fi, phone feature mis-billing, and random fees that were never supposed to be on the bill to begin with.

This month’s bill arrived yesterday, and it’s just as confounding as the month prior, with a $45.00 mystery “handling charges and taxes” fee on the bill.

After determining that 3.1Mbps for $40+ a month wasn’t my kind of “broadband,” I canceled my Internet service with Frontier. They relented quickly, considering my speed experience, and then had to figure out what telephone plan to put me on since my old plan, “Frontier Choices” had stopped being sold long ago.

I ended up on Frontier Essentials, which was $24.99 a month and offered 100 minutes of long distance and a healthy package of phone features.  Come to think of it, that $45 fee may be for a Dell Netbook that should have been cancelled the moment I dropped broadband service from Frontier.  I may have solved my own mystery.

Unfortunately, Sherlock Holmes couldn’t resolve the rest of my bill.  Frontier also attempted to apply a two year price protection agreement to the Frontier Essentials plan, which they never informed me about and one I will not accept.  After making the programming changes to properly set all of my phone features, they managed to mess them up.  No more caller ID on a call waiting call for me.

Attempts to check one’s Frontier bill online through their impenetrable website would task Bill Gates.  There is nothing intuitive or helpful about Frontier’s online account center, which needs a lot of work.  No matter, the information on the website I did manage to get about my account was completely different than what is on my bill anyway.

Using the customer service web form was comical as well.  Hitting the “enter” key within the body of their message form was treated as a request to send the message.  I wonder how many incomplete e-mail requests this company receives.  Regardless, they never responded to my multiple inquiries anyway.

Honestly, this is a mess.  Customers should not have to endure these kinds of billing errors, inconsistent information, and additional errors introduced when representatives attempt to repair the original mistakes.

Bob had advice for Frontier on his way out the door:

I told the representative who canceled my Frontier service for me that the people in sales should tell customers up front about the taxes and line fees, etc., when they order the service so that there are no surprises. They should have a list there for each state that they sell service in and list the appropriate taxes and fees for whatever state that customer resides in. (But of course, they won’t do that because after all, nobody would order the service then if they knew the real costs associated with it.)

Gross Revenue Surcharges, Disgusting Revenue Surcharges, Billing A Fee for Charging a Fee…

A major issue confronting telephone companies that don’t always affect cable operators are the piled-on taxes and fees, often mandated by federal, state, and local governments that get attached to one’s phone bill.  There is a fundamental unfairness about the disparity between fees that the telephone company must charge and collect for broadband service, that cable operators do not.

The correct answer, of course, is to demand governments stop imposing them altogether, not simply stick them on cable operators as well.

Frontier’s list of taxes and fees is staggering:

City Tax
A tax collected for City Governments from purchasers of products and users of telecommunication services, which may include equipment, installation, maintenance as well as local and long distance service.

Federal Excise Tax
The Federal excise tax is a tax on local telephone service that includes services and facilities sold in connection with local service. This tax is a percentage of the cost of your services and appears on the local phone portion of your bill. The percentage used to calculate the amount of the tax appears with the charge. For example, “Federal excise tax at 3%.” Frontier acts as a billing agent and collects these fees on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). All monies collected for the Federal Excise Tax are paid directly to the IRS.

Additional State Taxes
Each state has the power to levy Additional State Taxes. In many cases, these charges are similar to those levied at the interstate level.

Federal Subscriber Line Charge
The Federal Subscriber Line Charge is a nationwide charge that is designed to recover a portion of local telephone companies’ costs associated with providing long distance carriers with access to the local phone network. Long distance carriers pay the remainder of the cost. This charge is regulated by the FCC.

Federal Universal Service Fund (USF) Charge
The Federal Universal Service Fund supports telecommunications services in schools, public libraries, and rural health-care facilities. The fund also subsidizes local service to high-cost areas and low-income customers. The FCC regulates this charge. Customers pay a monthly, per-line surcharge to recover local companies’ contributions to the Fund. This fee helps to keep local telephone rates affordable for all customers.

Gross Revenue Surcharge
Telephone companies must pay tax on total revenue. This funds the Public Utility Commissions and other state services. This charge represents each consumer’s portion of that tax on revenue.

Federal Carrier Cost Recovery Charge
The Federal Carrier Cost Recovery Charge recovers national costs associated with various federal regulatory fees and programs. Rates vary from company to company, as do the names given for this charge.

Emergency Service Fee for 911
The 911 Emergency Service Fee is a fee to cover the costs of local jurisdictions providing 911 emergency response services to its citizens. The fee is generally either an amount per telephone access line or a percentage of revenue. State law mandates the fee. Frontier collects this fee on behalf of the appropriate 911 jurisdictions within the state.

Telecommunication Relay Service/Hearing Impaired/Telecommunications Device for the Deaf
The Telecommunications Relay Service/Hearing impaired/Telecommunications devices for the Deaf surcharge is a fee for providing special needs equipment, facilities and services for people who are deaf to use the telecommunications network. This includes special phones, hearing devices, Braille pads, necessary network switching equipment and operation of a service center that the customer uses for specialized services. The requirements for collecting and remittance of the fees are state specific and established by state law, public utility commission rule or tariff filings.

Intrastate Access Charge
This is a state assessed charge. It partially reimburses telephone service providers for costs associated with routing long distance calls made by local customers. It is applied to all residential and business customers who have telephone lines, whether they make long distance calls or not.

Sales tax
A local, state or other sales tax may be applied to your telecommunications charges, just as it is for many other types of purchases.

Service Provider Number Portability
Federal law requires all local phone companies to provide “service provider number portability,” which allows customers to retain their phone number when switching companies to provide their local phone service. Federal law allows for the recovery of costs associated with the development, implementation, and operability of service provider number portability.

A few of those taxes are cleverly broken out and recovered by Frontier when they could simply be covered as a cost of doing business, but many are government mandated and don’t stay in Frontier’s bank accounts.

Where does it end?  At least we stopped paying for the Spanish-American War of 1898 as part of a federal excise tax a few years back.

Dealing With the Devil You Know Will At Least Get The Bill Right

In the end, Bob headed back to Time Warner Cable, who re-signed him to Road Runner service at a $29.95 monthly “welcome back” rate for the next year and had the self-install kit ready for him to pick up at his convenience.

I was happy with DSL here this time around for the most part, but sadly, I also realize that the best download speed belongs to Road Runner.  I asked the representative for TWC is if he was local and he said “why sure, right down here on Mt. Hope Avenue [in Rochester].”  (Frontier representatives are in DeLand, Florida.)  There are no hidden fees or taxes with Road Runner.  I know that my $29.95 a month Internet won’t run me over $40 a month or anywhere close to that.

At least as long as Cap ‘n Tier doesn’t return to haunt us in the future.

This remains the dilemma.  One really wants to cheer on competitors like Frontier to get it right and get it done.

Time Warner Cable, at least on the local level, is an incredibly well run company with excellent service and great employees.  The technology is up to date, the speeds are fast, and you always get the sense things are moving forward. The corporate side in New York is another matter entirely, bordering on unmitigated evil with out of touch executives who want to gouge every last cent and don’t listen to the needs and concerns of customers unless they are forced into doing so.  Cap ‘n Tier is the most recent egregious example.  At least for broadband, it has always been easy to be a loyal Time Warner Cable customer.  If Cap ‘n Tier comes back, it will take about five minutes to cancel and head for the exit.  It really is that much of an insult.

Doing business with Frontier feels like dealing with a company trying to keep the lights on as their primary copper wire telephone business is slowly slipping away.  Cost savings at all costs seem to be the order of the day, and one just senses the willingness to spend money to earn money by building a 21st century distribution platform just isn’t in our future.  Too often, gimmicks, games, and contract traps try to grasp and hold customers from leaving even faster, at least in cities like Rochester.  Perhaps expectations have been lower in more rural communities, but they aren’t here, and I frankly don’t know any college student or 20-something that actually has Frontier wired telephone service.

It’s not too late.  Buying up Verizon castoffs may not be the best allocation of revenue when your core business is slowly bleeding away.  Invest in a real overhaul of your network to compete with Time Warner Cable, among others, with a consistently fast broadband product.  Overhaul the website to provide a much easier, and more modern looking interface to get customers the information they need.  Respond to customer service inquiries made online.  Publish your product lists and pricing online.  Retrain customer service representatives to make sure they are providing a consistent message about product promotions and pricing and, crucially, avoid making the kinds of billing errors that make customers want to simply head elsewhere.

I fear for what turmoil Frontier and their customers will go through trying to digest millions of displaced Verizon customers.  After watching the nightmare from FairPoint, I, among millions of others, will not want to see a repeat performance.  After what I’ve gone through the last two months, I’m not exactly confident about that.

Come Monday, if my own bill isn’t straightened out, my 23 year history with Rochester Telephone and Frontier Communications which replaced it will end and I’ll be getting phone service from Time Warner Cable, much as I hate giving them more of my money at a time like this.