Those sound like internal complications of doing business. A well designed software system could solve a lot of those issues. That’s not the consumers problem. Especially when prices are high. If they want to charge fees instead of flat rates they need to say what they are.
That’s like a store that won’t tell you the price of anything until you buy it. Or a hospital lol for some reason we let that one slip
I think a store is a bad comparison since you are outright purchasing a good from said store, not purchasing a service subscription provided by and entirely managed by the store
But the price of the service isn’t managed by the store in this case. The ISPs have no control over costs associated with compliance with local ordinances.
This isn’t something where they can negotiate with a supplier to control costs. If the local government changes a fee, they have to comply, and sometimes that compliance requires a fee change.
We got screwed by a new state law that is cutting millions a year in certain commercial fees for my little town (because commercial developers own state legislatures) so we’re massively changing all our other fees to offset that hit.
My new proposed fee schedule is being announced on the 25th, voted in on the 29th, and go into effect the 1st. It’s literally impossible for the ISP to know what they’ll need to bill customers 2 weeks from now.
Oh, and we have another fee change coming the next month because the fiscal year changes, so it’s going to change twice in 2 months.
I’ll be the first to say ISPs suck. But this is not a simple problem to solve without simply increasing every bill by 30 bucks a month to build a buffer in case the local jurisdiction does something unexpected.
Those sound like internal complications of doing business. A well designed software system could solve a lot of those issues. That’s not the consumers problem. Especially when prices are high. If they want to charge fees instead of flat rates they need to say what they are.
That’s like a store that won’t tell you the price of anything until you buy it. Or a hospital lol for some reason we let that one slip
I REALLY hate it when websites won’t tell you the true price until you go through the whole checkout process
When you go to the store, the cashier doesn’t say “come back in 3 months for the same price.”
I think a store is a bad comparison since you are outright purchasing a good from said store, not purchasing a service subscription provided by and entirely managed by the store
But the price of the service isn’t managed by the store in this case. The ISPs have no control over costs associated with compliance with local ordinances.
This isn’t something where they can negotiate with a supplier to control costs. If the local government changes a fee, they have to comply, and sometimes that compliance requires a fee change.
We got screwed by a new state law that is cutting millions a year in certain commercial fees for my little town (because commercial developers own state legislatures) so we’re massively changing all our other fees to offset that hit.
My new proposed fee schedule is being announced on the 25th, voted in on the 29th, and go into effect the 1st. It’s literally impossible for the ISP to know what they’ll need to bill customers 2 weeks from now.
Oh, and we have another fee change coming the next month because the fiscal year changes, so it’s going to change twice in 2 months.
I’ll be the first to say ISPs suck. But this is not a simple problem to solve without simply increasing every bill by 30 bucks a month to build a buffer in case the local jurisdiction does something unexpected.