Have you ever looked at you phone bill and wondered about the strange charges? As it turns out, you should be wondering. A recent call to Entouch Systems (my local communications provider) left me puzzled. I called Entouch about the "Res FCC Approved Line Chg" on the telephone portion of my bill and asked to have it removed. The representative first tried to tell me that the charge was from the FCC. When I told her that it indeed was not, she said they still couldn't remove it. The Entouch representative put me on hold to speak with a supervisor, then she again said she could not do anything.
The FCC's Understanding Your Telephone Bill explains the the fallacy in the Entouch rep's argument. The site clearly states:
Access charges are fees charged subscribers or other telephone companies by a local telephone company for the use of its local network.
The FCC allows local telephone companies to bill customers for a portion of the costs of providing access. These charges are not a government charge or tax. The maximum allowable access charges per telephone line are set by the FCC, but local telephone companies are free to charge less or not at all. Access charges for second or additional lines at the same residence are higher than the charges for the primary line. These charges can be described on your telephone bill as “Federal access charge,” “Customer or Subscriber Line Charge,” “Interstate Access Charge,” etc.
State public service commissions regulate access charges for intrastate (within a state) calls. In some states, a state subscriber line charge may appear on customer bills.
I am in the process of filing a complaint with the FCC based on this information. I am curious to see how Entouch will explain it's compliance with the FCC's Truth-in-Billing requirement. That should be another interesting tap dance.
I encourage you to contact your phone company and ask them about this junk fee that is being passed off as a tax. If you have a written response from your phone company with a "supposed" explanation of the fee that you believe to be false, I would like to hear from you. I'm wondering if there is an attorney out there who would like to take up this issue as a class-action case for consumers in the Houston area.
For more information about Junk Fees on your phone bill here at two sites that you can visit:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/understanding.html (FCC)
http://www.rd.com/content/dont-pay-these-new-hidden-fees/1/ (Reader's Digest Article on Junk Fees)
For more information about real estate and mortgage issues in Katy or West Houston contact Aaron Layman. He is a licensed real estate broker and mortgage broker. You can contact him directly at 281-994-5190. You can also visit him on the web at www.AaronLayman.com.
