What is Verizon Smoking?

Verizon is our home long distance carrier of record. But as I have written here we use a calling card, Skype etc for most international calls. Every once in a while we slip and in error use the direct dial - and then "entrapment" kicks in.

Last month,  my wife had a short call to Australia. $ 4.10 after taxes a minute. I did not protest.

This month, $ 2.50 a minute to the UK. I protest.  Three calls, escalations later, we negotiate it down to 25c a minute. Still too high, but my blood pressure bills would cost more.

Who sets these prices in this day and age? And who teaches the call centers the lame excuses to defend those rates? One of the excuses was "we are a regulated company".

Regulated indeed - as this Onion "rate plan" suggests. Regulated indeed - as Om points they do not pass along a tax break and change it instead to a service fee. Regulated indeed - Verizon lost a million home customers last quarter. In one quarter.

Come on Verizon - as I wrote here the future is so bright for telecoms with global, sensor web 2.0 driven demand. But you are sure losing the PR battle one domestic customer at a time.