Phonescams

My favorite technology/gadget writer is David Pogue in the NY Times. Not too long ago he started a campaign against the phone companies for eating up cell minutes with needlessly long recorded prequel messages in voice mail..."If you would like to page this person, press 65457...". In his column today he writes about Verizon doubling its cancellation fee...and about another of that company's annoying cell phone practices. They intentionally build their phones so you'll accidentally start a connection to the Internet, and then charge you $1.99 each time.

I have a friend in West Virginia who has been stuck with Verizon as the only carrier in the area. He has been trying to get them to correct his bill, eliminating a $60+ charge that shows up every month. Each month he calls and they eliminate it, only for it to show up again the next month. Another company, Frontier, is buying Verizon's landline business in that state. Does Frontier know something we don't? People and deep-sixing landlines all over the place.

Here's my pet peeve: if I try to connect to the net using my ATandT service, and it won't connect, I STILL get charged for a certain amount of data transmitted. Uh, how can you justify that? Did the little company 1's and 0's work hard to fail to make the connection?

OK, and while I'm in a complaining mode....this new Blogger editing program lacks spell check. What't that all abut. (-:
Plus: why can't I use an "and" sign in this blogger program?
And tell me, what did they do with the "cents" sign on keyboards?
Over and out.