When I buy a cellphone, I am quoted a price for the accompanying plan. The price is essentially a lie, or at best an attempt at obscuring the real costs of the plan. If you get a $20.00 per month plan, you pay that, plus an additional system access fee, plus a 911 access fee, plus taxes. On a $20 per month plan, these costs nearly double the cost of the plan.

Isn’t this deception? Isn’t it misleading and underhanded? Why should I pay a fee to access a system that I’ve already paid to access in the form of a cell phone plan? The name doesn’t even make sense! I’ve already paid to access your shitty network! That’s what the plan is for! And to add insult to injury the cellphone companies may simply raise their system access fee at any time. If their profits aren’t quite where they feel they should be, boom, up goes the system access fee.

Frankly, I’d like to launch a class action lawsuit under consumer protection laws, if only to make sure that the full costs of each phone plan are actually named in the plan’s cost, including 911 access fees and whatever other fee cell phone companies want to foist on consumers.

Tags: crap, gouging, mobiles, money