Screwed By Verizon

[Porfirio]

Apparently with the ¨blessing¨of our Government Verizon has carte blanch to charge us exhorbitant and unethical fees for their services. Please watch English Channels (NBC, CBS, ABC & CNN) on your cable service, and note that Verizon is advertising FULL service, including cable TV, high speed Internet connection and long distance (all calls within the continental US, PUERTO RICO and CANADA) for $99 US per month. Interestingly Our Friends & Relatives living in NY can purchase real vallue calling cards, for example a $5.00 calling card good for 90 to 120 minutes to telephone Family & Friends in the Dominican Republic are available. Similar calling cards are available in Miami & throughout the US. Another telephone Company VONAGE offers unlimited local and long distance calls within the US, Canada & Puerto Rico for $24.99 per month. Watts line (800 free calls) are not available with Verizon, and if you must make an 800 number telephone call, Verizon announces that ¨YOU WILL BE CHARGED AT THE INTERNATIONAL RATE OF $40 CENTS PER MINUTE¨. Almost anywhere in the world 800 numbers are free, only DR has the distinction of paying extortion to Verizon. Once again our illustrious Government permits this thievery to continue. The consensus of opinions is payoffs to those in power. It is noted that Verizon has higher (more profitable) per capita income from revenues generated from the Dominican Republic than the US market. There is no competition in the DR, (is Tri Com or Orange competition ?) while fierce competition within the US keeps Verizon and other telephone companys in line our ¨leaders¨do nothing on our behalf to control the escalating outragiously inflated charges levied by Verizon.

[carina]

Verizon has big banners out in Puerto Plata now for big discounts on calls to Italy, Puerto Rico, Usa, Canada..
Just saw it on Beller.

[J D Sauser]

Originally Posted by Porfirio

... and if you must make an 800 number telephone call, Verizon announces that ¨YOU WILL BE CHARGED AT THE INTERNATIONAL RATE OF $40 CENTS PER MINUTE¨. Almost anywhere in the world 800 numbers are free, only DR has the distinction of paying extortion to Verizon.

I take it you are mentioning calling a US 1-800 number, right?
Well that numer is only free is you call FROM the US, which when calling form the DR is not exactly the case.
Most countries will not even let you call a outside 1-800 number at all, which can be problematic at times as most business in the States tend to ignore that fact and remain unreachable from the outside because they forgot to post a regular number on the side.

If you want to call US based 1-800 number from the anywhere else than the US for really free, then you might find it more suitable to use internet based phone operator (E.g: www.skype.com).

I hope this is of help... J-D.

[Squat]

Well, just my two centavos :
We are paying one of the most expensive internet access of the Americas...
I wish there was a couple of other telephone company (apart from Tricom, which belongs partly to Verizon) who would offer internet access, so with the comcurence, maybe prices would go down a bit...

[riravaga]

You are right, I don´t know how the goverment wants that more people has access to internet when you must pay for to have an internet account and pay aditional money for the time of the connection in the case of dial up service.

With the equivalent to 170 domican pesos 5.00 usd.$ you can´t speak 2 hrs as our family do in the usa.

The offer a phoneline with ADSL for 49.99 usd$ 1,700.00 dominican pesos, and here they offer the ADSL for that amount where is not include the mouthly fee of the service.

An still the president of verizon said the DR has still the lowes prices in LA for telephone services.

[Texas Bill]

in the DR ever oticed the "transfer rate in KBS" of that service?
Most of the time it's around 24-28 KBS. Now, what was the trandfer rate of your "dial-up" service before switching? Yeah, around 35-50 KBS. Remarkable difference isn't it. I've concluded that the only advantaage of DSL here is the ability to have incoming calls at the sametime as Internet service.
I'm positive the phone Co ahs dedicated one of their "Other" outdated servers to DSL.
Anyone know about this???

Texas Bill

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Texas Bill

Anyone know about this???
Texas Bill

Yes, we had three technicians in our office for four days, scratching their heads and making secret phone calls to 'la oficina' as the speed did not want to do what it was promised to do. Eventually, when they figured we are not going to go away quietly, they did the right things server side and now we cruise! Keep complaining! Keep calling!

[Texas Bill]

Chris:

Thanks for the info.
I'll start my bitching procedures immediately!
I HATE being taken advantage of because of my ignorance!

Texas Bill

[project9]

Texas Bill: the average transfer rate of a dialup connection is 5 kb/s not 35 or 50 kb/s as you said. The average speed of a 256 kbps dsl line is 25-30 kb/s anywhere in the world, why do you want it to be different here?

Porfirio: have you noticed that this is a market oriented economy?

[Texas Bill]

Originally Posted by project9

Texas Bill: the average transfer rate of a dialup connection is 5 kb/s not 35 or 50 kb/s as you said. The average speed of a 256 kbps dsl line is 25-30 kb/s anywhere in the world, why do you want it to be different here?

Porfirio: have you noticed that this is a market oriented economy?

Well, live and learn!

Just going by what I saw/am seeing on the transfer rates on the screen during download, that's all.

Texas Bill