Hidden Charges Out of Control

By Bill Leutzinger, President, TelecomMedic

My company prides itself on letting our customers know exactly what hidden charges are included on their bill. We take the extra time to make sure each proposal lays out EUCL, PICC, LNP, etc. However, it has recently been brought to my attention that this entire tax and surcharge thing is completely out of control.

Right now I am looking at two bills from two different vendors for a customer in Chicago. I wanted to keep this as simple as possible, so I chose a bill that had one PRI. What I found is listed below and completely blew my mind.

In the end, they both charge outrageous fees, but they are completely different and you really don’t know what is what. For example, company #1 charges $57.50 for 911 while company # 2 charges $2.50. Company #1 charges Federal and State taxes twice and company #2 doesn’t list out Federal or State taxes.

The bottom line is prices on circuits continue to drop, but these surcharges and taxes (if you really want to call them taxes) continue to go up. Everyone calls them something different and charges a different amount.

What I really want to know is what is an actual tax that gets passed on to the government and what is just going back into the company’s pocket as profit?

I know that the price of the circuits continue to go down and so does our commission. At the same time, the price of marked up surcharges continues to go up, and we don’t make any commission off that. It seems like the vendors are just shifting their profits around to lower advertised prices and keep their margins the same (or increasing them) while paying us less.

Finally, who is the first to hear about all of this when the customer sits down and looks over the bill? Of course the agent is the first phone call. We try and tell the customer what to expect, but new line items and higher surcharges seem to come up on every new bill. How do you deal with this as an agent? I, for one, have a hard time showing someone $225 worth of taxes and surcharges on a $305 circuit. This is the main reason I don’t sell company #1 anymore, but who has the time to check all this on a regular basis? How can we put a stop to this madness? As you can see from the example above, the advertised price really doesn’t mean a thing!

Bill Leutzinger is president of Chicago-based TelecomMedic, an agency providing voice, data and video services to business customers. He is a member of the 2008-09 PHONE+ Channel Partners Advisory Board.