Verizon has a long history of nickel-and-diming customers with bogus fees. And they’re at it again, this time with broadband internet service.

Back in 1996, I was a bit ahead of the curve. Back then, pagers were all the rage, and everyone had one, including me. However, I also decided to buck the trend and be a little bit elite, and get a cell phone, as well. At the time, the pickings were still slim, coverage was anything but nationwide, plans were expensive and digital cell service was just barely being deployed. In the area, there were only two cellular carriers, and I went with what was then Bell Atlantic.

So there I was, with my analog cell phone, with my $40 a month plan that offered 30 whole minutes of airtime per month, and of course I HARDLY EVER used this phone, except for the weekends, where $10 extra a month got me unlimited airtime. I gabbed away on Saturdays and Sundays, thinking I wouldn’t be charged extra for such calls.

Boy, was I wrong. The first bill came and I discovered that those 2,500 weekend minutes I used didn’t incur airtime charges, but they did incur a 5 cent per minute “landline access fee,” to the tune of $125 (the same fee, I discovered, was also charged to peak airtime calls, on top of the minutes used). Yes, this was for local calls. Had I been making long distance calls, the fee would have been 12 cents per minute.

What did Bell Atlantic Mobile have to say about this?

“That’s a fee that we have no control over,” the rep I spoke to, whose name I forget, had said. “That fee is levied on us by the phone company whenever we connect to their landlines.” Yes, even if the call is local.

“Wait a minute,” I remember retorting. “This is Bell Atlantic Mobile. And I’m calling landline numbers that are served by Bell Atlantic.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re the phone company! Do you mean to tell me you’re charging yourselves to access your own phone lines?”

Bell Atlantic Mobile didn’t quite have an answer to that. Neither did their competitor at the time, AT&T Wireless, which didn’t seem to get charged this fee by Bell Atlantic (or at least, they were okay with not passing it on to their customers).

Fast forward to today. Bell Atlantic is now Verizon, and cell phones are now commonplace, and cheap. Combined with Voice Over IP, these new technologies are slowly wiping out landline service, and so Verizon must hook customers into keeping their phone lines by selling DSL broadband internet service. And they’re trying yet again to fleece their customers, this time with a “tax recovery fee.” According to the letter received by Verizon DSL customers:

“This is not a tax charged directly to Verizon Online’s customers, but the partial recovery of tax that Verizon Online must pay when they purchase the DSL circuit from the telephone company.”

Huh. Uhm, who is the phone company again? Verizon? The same company providing the DSL service? Ah, I thought so.