from the because-we-can dept
For decades now, broadband ISPs have abused the lack of meaningful competition in the telecom market by not only refusing to shore up historically awful customer service, but by raising rates hand over fist. This usually involves leaving the advertised price largely the same, but pummeling customers with all manner of misleading fees and surcharges that drive up the actual price paid post sale. And by and large regulators from both major political parties have been perfectly ok with this practice, despite it effectively being false advertising.
CenturyLink (combined by the merger of Qwest, CenturyTel and Embarq) has been exceptionally talented when it comes to misleading fees. A few years ago the company began charging its broadband customers an "Internet Cost Recovery Fee," which the company's website explains as such: