Today I was looking at the phone bill for a business line and there was a long distance fee charged on it. This was odd as no one ever uses it for long distance calls. Upon investigating, this was apparently some kind of monthly fee to make the rates cheaper. Of course, it makes no sense to pay for it if you don’t use it, so I proceeded to phone in to get it straighten out.
From what I gather, it seems like it was added on as they assumed that I would save more money that way. As an example, without it a long distance charge would be at least 40 cents a minute and with the plan it would be just over about 6 cents a minute. Of course, that was kind of the angle that was used to hopefully try and keep me on the plan.
A lot of times it does sound like a smart thing to do as the potential savings sound like a lot if you do use it for even that small amount of time. I can only imagine how many people just don’t bother canceling such plans as a result even if they don’t use.