I saw the same kinds of behavior from WorldCom years before their collapse. I was the technical manager at a small ISP in Houston and was presented with the WorldCom invoices and was shocked to find 20% per month in phony charges. 2.5% is a far cry from 20% but that 20% had to start somewhere. Lorell -----Original Message----- From: Patrick Giagnocavo [mailto:patrick@zill.net] Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 10:47 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Level3 tries cell-phone style billing scam on customers Today I looked at my most recent bill from Level3. They are now assessing a 2.5% surcharge, which is listed as "Taxes" on the bandwidth bill I have. In the state of PA, telecoms services are explicitly not taxable. When you call Level3 billing, they admit in their recorded message it is not a tax at all, but a surcharge, and if you want to dispute it you are supposed to quote back their own contract terms to them via email (i.e. you cannot reach a human). I would expect this kind of scamminess from Verizon's cell-phone billing, but a contract is a contract and I can see no provision for arbitrarily tacking on fees, illegally labeling them as "taxes" and then putting the onus on you to prove that they can't charge you. Anyone else seeing this same behavior from Level3? (It seems that the larger a telecom company gets, the more they want to act like a scum-sucking ILEC.) --Patrick