April 22, 2002
Can consumers really beat the phone
companies at their own game?
Just when the news was getting around about unadvertised instate rates being higher than state-to-state tolls, phone companies started inventing new fees. As soon as co-billing, instate connection, and property tax charges got some public awareness, yet another round of tricks and twists was incorporated into telephone service offerings.
The latest trends include adding universal service charges where they did not exist before, per-call connection fees and higher rates for international calls to mobile phones, pagers and military bases. Hit hardest are users of the "10-10" and other dial-around services.
Adapting to these trends in order to reveal the true total cost of phone calls, three-year old consumer help site 10-10PhoneRates.com is launching new database-driven Web tools to objectively compare costs of instate calls for all 50 states and D.C., as well as interstate and international calls to more than 200 countries and territories. Over a dozen popular dial around-plans are compared.
Unlike most rate comparison Web sites, 10-10PhoneRates.com does not sell any phone services. "This allows the site to more objectively serve the needs of consumers " according to founder Rich Sayers.
He manages to pay the bills, including a five-figure investment in developing this new database software, by accepting some banner and text ads from a few phone companies honest enough to clear the hurdles necessary to advertise on the site.
