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cryowizardThe reason why I moved to Vonage: Verizon charged me $36 a month for a phone I barely used. Most of the charges were taxes.
$14.99 for 500 anytime minutes with no added crap sounded good to me. Here's my first Vonage invoice:
Not exactly clean, but still tolerable. Here's how Vonage describes RRF: "A regulatory recovery surcharge of $0.99 applies to each phone number. Vonage uses this fee to pay our regulatory-related fees and expenses, including taxes, number portability charges, and related legal fees." This means Feds are charging Vonage, and Vonage is passing this fee to consumers.
Periodically, a E911 recovery fee of $.99 is added to the bill. That's fine, I want E911 to work and I am willing to pay for it.
But then the greedy local government fucks have figured they just have to have a piece of the pie:
Somebody explain to me what the fuck are all those things?
NYS decided it just had to start charging NYS sales tax since this is a "utility" service.
"Local Transit Tax" -- are they charging me for transfer of IP packets over Brooklyn's fiber lines? And the rest of it seems like pure local bullshit.
Once again, our lovely local officials dipping into my pockets for no reason whatsoever.
$14.99 for 500 anytime minutes with no added crap sounded good to me. Here's my first Vonage invoice:
Residential Basic 500 for 1-(XXX)-XXX-XXXX (04/Feb-03/Mar) $14.99
Regulatory Recovery Fee $1.50
Federal Excise Tax $0.45
Total Amount $16.94Not exactly clean, but still tolerable. Here's how Vonage describes RRF: "A regulatory recovery surcharge of $0.99 applies to each phone number. Vonage uses this fee to pay our regulatory-related fees and expenses, including taxes, number portability charges, and related legal fees." This means Feds are charging Vonage, and Vonage is passing this fee to consumers.
Periodically, a E911 recovery fee of $.99 is added to the bill. That's fine, I want E911 to work and I am willing to pay for it.
But then the greedy local government fucks have figured they just have to have a piece of the pie:
Residential Basic 500 for 1-(XXX)-XXX-XXXX (04/Jun-03/Jul) $14.99
Regulatory Recovery Fee $0.99
Emergency 911 Cost Recovery $0.99
Federal Excise Tax $0.52
Sales Tax $1.40
Local Franchise Tax $0.40
County MCTD Surcharge Sec. 186 $0.10
Local Transit Tax $0.07
County MCTD Surcharge Sec. 184 $0.02
Total Amount $19.48Somebody explain to me what the fuck are all those things?
NYS decided it just had to start charging NYS sales tax since this is a "utility" service.
"Local Transit Tax" -- are they charging me for transfer of IP packets over Brooklyn's fiber lines? And the rest of it seems like pure local bullshit.
Once again, our lovely local officials dipping into my pockets for no reason whatsoever.