Frontier Refuses To Waive Router Rental Fee For Customer Who Brought His Own (arstechnica.com) 254
Ever since Frontier bought Verizon's Texas network in 2016, the company has been charging some customers a $10-per-month router rental fee even if they're using their own router. Rich Son of Texas purchased Verizon's FiOS Quantum Gateway router for $200 in order to avoid monthly rental fees. He said: "[the router] worked well for me until the takeover happened with Frontier and I began getting charged for using my own equipment. I have continued to call Frontier and was repeatedly assured that the fees will be taken off my bill." But that didn't happen. Ars Technica reports: Son filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission; Frontier responded to the complaint but stuck to its position that he has to pay the fee. A voicemail that Frontier left with Son and his wife said the company informed the FCC that "the router monthly charge is an applicable fee, and it will continue to be billed." Another voicemail from Frontier told them they can avoid the monthly rental fees if they purchase a Frontier router.
"We can reimburse you if you purchase a Frontier router. We cannot reimburse you if you have a Verizon router -- we are not Verizon," the voicemail said. "You can choose to use your own router, however you will be still charged the monthly fee... the difference is we do not service the router that you choose to use." "It's $10 today -- but how much will it cost us tomorrow?" Son said. "I'd consider letting it go if their customer service blew me out of the water, but they've been terrible ever since Verizon forced Frontier on us." When contacted by Ars Technica, Frontier said that it refuses to stop charging the Wi-Fi router rental fee even when customers use their own router and claimed it does so in order to cover higher support costs for customers like Son."
"We can reimburse you if you purchase a Frontier router. We cannot reimburse you if you have a Verizon router -- we are not Verizon," the voicemail said. "You can choose to use your own router, however you will be still charged the monthly fee... the difference is we do not service the router that you choose to use." "It's $10 today -- but how much will it cost us tomorrow?" Son said. "I'd consider letting it go if their customer service blew me out of the water, but they've been terrible ever since Verizon forced Frontier on us." When contacted by Ars Technica, Frontier said that it refuses to stop charging the Wi-Fi router rental fee even when customers use their own router and claimed it does so in order to cover higher support costs for customers like Son."
Sue them (Score:3, Insightful)
Legal action and contacting the local news is the only way you're going to fix this.
Try the state regulatory commission first (Score:3)
For the person in the article, that's the Public Utility Commission of Texas [texas.gov].
In general, state regulatory bodies have the power to smack utilities over the head. Getting them to use that power may require local news attention, of course...
Re: (Score:2)
Erh... I live in a country with consumer protection laws that make the US look like corporate heaven. And even here this shit would fly. Actually, not only would but does, pretty much every provider forces their crap onto you, some of them even make it mandatory to use it.
Re: Sue them (Score:4, Informative)
Charging for something not provided and not requested is generally fradulent, and a contract attempting to force someone to pay for something that was not provided would often be considered fraudulent.
Frontier says it's not Verizon. Frontier didn't provide a router. Frontier has no basis on which to charge rent for a router. Even if it's contracts say it does.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He doesn't have the router? Why, did he throw it away? They certainly handed him the router when he signed the contract.
They don't charge him for using it, they charge him for having it. And he has to have it, if he has a contract with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now imagine they don't let you hand it back. It's part of the contract that you take it, we're not taking it back, sorry.
Re: Sue them (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Didn't RTFA, did you. (Score:2)
Why bother commenting?
Re: (Score:2)
Want to bet the contract says they did?
Re: Sue them (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No they don't. That's the whole point of consumer protection law. The courts will deal with such cases on a "reasonable expectation" basis. I think there's an argument the guy should reasonably expect not to have to pay the charge if he's not using the item he's being charged for.
But we all know what's really going on here. The company wanted a lower advertised price for its service, so it unbundled the router as a separate item to be added to the bill later. This is a fairly basic deception of the kin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then what do you sue over?
Re: (Score:2)
Switch to a competitor (Score:5, Insightful)
You do have a competitor, don't you [youtube.com]?
Consider that $10/mo a tax for supporting politicians who don't see anything wrong with broadband monopolies.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If YouTube gives you the boot, you can still host videos on your own server. You no longer have access to the potential audience Google has built up around their site, but no one is preventing you from doing the free speech thing.
There is no roll-your-own option when your single choice of broadband provider gives you the boot. Have fun paying a lot more money for a lot less data on a wireless/satellite plan.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That YouTube is a monopoly? When were they convicted?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, but this monopoly wasn't created by the market. It was created by the government. The local governments awarded cable and phone monopolies in exchange for concessions like service guarantees to low-income areas. The rationale for government involvement in the cable and phone markets initially made sense - you don't want dozens of different companies each stringing up their own individu
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry, but this monopoly wasn't created by the market. It was created by the government. The local governments awarded cable and phone monopolies in exchange for concessions like service guarantees to low-income areas.
Sorry, but the government never granted telephone monopolies, and all cable TV monopolies expired by the 1990s/early 2000s. Also, there were never large-scale government-granted monopolies on Internet service.
What's going on here is a natural monopoly. Start-up costs are enormous, and the incumbent can use those costs to drive any new competitor out of business. This is entirely a feature of the free market in any market with very high start-up costs.
Spyware? (Score:5, Insightful)
> the difference is we do not service the router that you choose to use."
Sounds like "our firmware isn't on it so we can't extract profiling data from it to sell to advertisers, which is worth $10/mo/sub to us".
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like "our firmware isn't on it so we can't extract profiling data from it to sell to advertisers, which is worth $10/mo/sub to us".
I think you overestimate what they'll sell you out for. More like 5c/mo/sub.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, you need a valid contract. Frontier bought out his service which means that the old contract should apply. If the customer leaves then I suspect there are no other services available anyway (it's not like there's any competition anymore).
Best approach is just to make a stink. A lot of companies will back down in the face of negative press. (and the customer doing this is totally legal, ethical, moral, and fitting in with even the most die hard free market views).
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but Frontier is a telecommunications company. Like all telecommunications companies, but especially cable companies they already rank at the bottom of customer satisfaction. They can't go any lower.
At best, the guy will get a refund for a few months and that's it.
I think most
Re: (Score:3)
The parent is a great example of why one should never take legal advice from /.
Did Verizon go bankrupt? No. Therefore the contract is still valid. Verizon may have sold their end of the contract to Frontier, but it's still valid.
The real issue is that the original contract probably allows unilateral increases and additions of fees.
Re: (Score:2)
The parent is a great example of why one should never take legal advice from /.
He did name himself dumbass.
Re: (Score:2)
So drop the fee to reduce support calls... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but customers like Son are only calling their support line because they are charging the fee. Drop the fee and some of their support calls would go away...
Let me say first that I'm on Son's side, not Frontier's.
But I find it hard to believe that people call for support just because they're paying for it. They're calling support because they have a problem that needs to be fixed on the provider's end. Drop the fee and people will still call if they have a problem.
Frontier is charging a fee because (1) it's what they charge customers who rent their router from Frontier; and (2) it's a convenient excuse to charge people with non-Frontier routers for support. I d
Re: (Score:2)
They claim it takes more money to train and retain tech staff on non-Frontier-approved hardware.
They also claim they do not support non-Frontier-approved hardware, exposing their own bullshit.
I think that's questionable, and they're just gouging.
See above.
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing New (Score:5, Interesting)
Verizon decided they could charge me a monthly "maintenance fee" for my old router because I didn't want to buy a refurbished but newer one from them. The more paranoid side of me suspects that the newer router is mainly to make it easier to monitor my usage, or at least provide a conduit to funnel more of my money to them, so I'll pass. Of course, my other option, Comcast, is arguably even more evil, so I suffer with it. It would be really nice if there were more alternatives.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good point, and I did consider that, but I have a DVR, so I need MOCA to keep working. Getting my own MOCA-enabled router would be expensive, and I suspect it would be quite a bit of grief to get VZ to work with it, so I'm back to suffering with the fee. If it seems like the OTT services are sufficient in quantity and quality to ditch the DVR, I'm sure I'll reconsider.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I have cable TV service and a Motorola QIP DVR. I don't watch a lot of broadcast stuff, but I do watch some, and since I'm not that close to the city it looks like reception is iffy. Like I said (or meant to say), once the stuff I watch on cable is covered well enough on OTT services, I'll likely switch. I do have a Roku and watch some stuff there with mixed results.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's mainly that I'm old, crotchety, and set in my ways, at least TV-wise. I have channels that I watch, and it is currently more clunky to get the same content on the Roku than it is to flip to a channel, and at least some of them appear to have lower quality streams OTT.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
NO! Do not discard the Verizon router. They will claim it's their property and demand it back or charge you something ridiculous like $180 for it.
But yes, activate the ONT ethernet port and use that with whatever equipment you like.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, they'd much rather charge an enormous fee when you don't return it.
You have to buy it ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on how insistent they are at being asshats. When you bring your own device, you have to provide them the router ID so they can accept it on the network. If they sell you one, and the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, that'll be the one they automatically enable... same as they do when you rent.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
This is one of those areas where CenturyLink (my GPON provider) is a double-edge sword, but works well. Instead of registering a device with CL, they use PPPoE with a username/password, and over a specific VLAN ID. I can freely swap hardware as often as I like, so long as it support PPPoE and VLAN on the WAN port. Downside is the slightly reduced MTU though.Overall, it hasn't been an issue, still get ~940mbps in both directions.
Re: (Score:2)
Verizon FiOS isn't bad either. There's literally no authentication in my experience. The ONT is probably registered, but anything on the other side of the ONT is a free-for-all. Reboot the ONT, plug whatever router you want to into it, and it grabs an address via DHCP and just works. (Or you set the static address in the case of business FiOS, but it's still not authenticated via MAC or PPPoE.)
DSL uses PPPoE, but a lot of the DSLAMs are set to accept any username/PW combo these days. They've basically
Support? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not only that, wouldnt support costs be higher for the router that they are legally required to maintain?
Not defending them, but no. Many support calls you get are for misconfigurations, problems with cables and wifi etc in the house. In those circumstances standard well known equipment makes for much faster and scripted problem resolution. The reality is people call and always assume it is a problem at the other end, not of their own making so which router they have probably doesn't make much difference to call volumes, but it would to time taken to resolve the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Frontier is trying to engineer their own failure. (Score:2)
One call and "Bye bye!"
Re: (Score:2)
I did the same. Wasn’t really a huge fan of Spectrum, but at least the service worked.
Don't Give Up!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm also in Texas with Frontier service. I was "grandfathered" in on the Verizon plan, but when I made a change to my account, they started charging me $10 for a router I didn't have. The "Verizon" router at the time was a DLink router, nothing special, that died about 6 months in. I started using my own router at that point. Flash forward about 10 years when i made the change to my account, and I start getting a charge for their router....that i don't have in my possesion.
I called to get it fixed and got no where. I ended up finding the, Contact The President site (https://frontier.com/office-of-the-president-form) and filled out this form. About 3 days later i get a call, from one of the rudest people I have dealt with. Explaining her stupid logic of charging me for a router that i don't have in my possession is illegal and want the charge removed...this went on for about 90 minutes.......
After finally getting her to waive the fee for 6 months, i told her it wasn't good enough and to get her manager. From there I was told that it would be a few days as they don't just take calls....after a few words i agreed and we ended the call.
About another 3 days, the same woman calls me back and says they have agreed to waive the fee for 12 months, and i again say to get me a manager. she tells me to get a manager I am not agreeing to the fee waiver and will be a few more days. As an idiot that i am, i agree to the 12 months, and as a kicker she tells me that they will be sending me a router.....that i can just put in the closet, because........if i cancel service i have to return it if i don't want to be charged.
Flash forward to the next month, the fee is still there with a credit of somethhing like ~$140 ($10/month + taxes). I call back in to complain that wasnt the agreement. I get put in touch with the same woman as she "owns the case", we argue and she is even more rude then before...interrupting almost every sentence, telling me that this is part of there service, and that there is no way to waive the fee.
sorry for the long story, but after some choice words to her, i call in once a month and get a $10 credit because that's what they agreed to, most of the time i get it in one phone call, a couple time i have to hang up and call back to get another agent that is more willing to help.
My advice......complain, complain, complain....when you finally get what you want, be sure to cancel service once the agreement you have has run it's course. Once you are not a customer for 30 days, you can come back as a new customer and get the fee waived for 12-24 months
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Don't Give Up!!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Don’t just complain to them. File complaint with the public service commission, The FCC, The secretary of state, your state representatives, your city officials, your senators and congressmen in DC, The federal trade commission because charging you for something they’re not providing is a federal crime, and any other alphabet agency you can think of. Make sure your complaints are in writing as well as electronica and make sure to send carbon copies to frontier. Also look for a law firm willing to engage in a class action lawsuit in order to cost them a whole bunch of money and he settlement to get out of it. When you make waves you can’t just deal with a single person and complain she’s a nobody. You Gotta make waves big enough that the Board of Directors has to address the shit. You know what happens when the class-action lawsuit gets filed? Especially for something like illegally charging customers a fee for service they weren’t providing? People start selling their stock that gets the Board of Directors attention.
Ajit Pai will see to it personally (Score:2)
Don't call the FCC call your local public utility commission. If this doesn't work try FTC, local news and "social media".
This has got to be one of the most sleazy billing scams I've ever heard of any ISP even attempt to get away with. It's even worse than 28 day billing, cost recovery fees and evergreen contracts in that this is straight up fraud.
Better approach (Score:2)
File a complaint with your local municipality. They might be able to put pressure on Frontier when it comes time to renew franchise agreements.
liars (Score:5, Insightful)
Wi-Fi router rental fee even when customers use their own router and claimed it does so in order to cover higher support costs for customers like Son."
Nope. They should be charging a support costs fee in such case, not a router rental fee.
If there isn't a rented router, you can't charge for router rental. Has common sense left everyone so badly? How is this not a slam-dunk case in a small claims court ?
Never thought I'd see the day Aussies best America (Score:2)
I only get 16mbit down and 1mbit up, but that's never shaped traffic and truly unlimited, my biggest month being 1.4TB.
Furthermore, I am not aware of anyone, ever being stung for device rental, unless of course they're actually renting a device (generally is more of a 2 year, pay off the device fee)
Those Aussies with our terrible replacement NBN system have it marginally better than I do to boot.
Americans are getting screwed.
Oh 59 AUD a month too.
Fee for not using our services (Score:2)
Fee for not using our services $10/month. Thank you for not being our customer.
Fuck Frontier (Score:2)
Was there Day one of Frontier Fios (Score:2)
A decade ago, my first day as a contractor for Frontier was the day the spinoff of the VZ footprints to frontier in South Bend, Portland and Everett. Frontier walked into the deal with a billing system that was an absolute mess with the few markets they could provide ISDN and 3mbit/sec ADSL to. They had absolutely no idea how
So glad I live in the UK (Score:2)
The Rich Son (Score:2)
The Rich Son of Texas can't really be that rich if he is worried about a 10$ a month fee.
Same here (Score:2)
I have my own business class network, firewall, etc. And they won't wave the fee.
Real sat service is coming (Score:2)
No competition (Score:2)
This is what happens when the government chooses your utility providers.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
> If you don't like it make your own network
Monopoly grants suck like that.
However...
.
STARLINK IS COMING.
.
Re: So what? (Score:3)
>starlink
20gbs per square km of population....
This network is for wealthy execs who like to spend time on their ranch in Wyoming.
Re: So what? (Score:4)
20gbs per square km of population....
The implementation is inherently scalable. SpaceX will soon have more satellites in orbit than all other entities have ever had in history and launch capability to add another 420 nodes at a time.
This network is for wealthy execs who like to spend time on their ranch in Wyoming.
Nope - SpaceX can't pay for the network with 1%'ers (try the math yourself) and this thing is designed to fund Mars colonization out of profits. Pricing may initially be somewhat higher than the cheapest terrestrial for comparable speeds but it'll be available everywhere across northern latitudes that are poorly served by terrestrial, if at all.
Medium-term it's available for the "other three billion", getting everybody online and educated.
Re: (Score:2)
"This network is for wealthy execs who like to spend time on their ranch in Wyoming."
Or the half the population who knows there is a dramatically reduced cost of living and quality of life getting outside the city and into the entire rest of the damn country.
Think about this, you'll pay MUCH more to live in a tiny run down shithole in the shittiest and most dangerous ghetto than a single family home surrounded by magnolia trees in Georgia. The only downside is Internet. Well that and if you show up and don'
Re: (Score:2)
THIS. Satellite Internet is not broadband.
Having only high-bandwidth download, but not upload sucks.
Having extremely high latency means you can stream Netflix, and forget most other Internet uses. General web browsing will feel nice and slow, and forget online gaming of any sort.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm looking forward to Star Link. And...
We just started watching Mars, produced by Nat Geo (1-2 years ago I believe).
It's obviously a SpaceX/Elon Musk marketing ploy, but damn it is awesome and well written. And well, he's the only one actually making progress and pushing towards such a goal.
I love the time changes in the show, bit of real science intertwined with science based fiction.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Monopoly grants suck like that.
There were never monopoly grants for Internet service.
There were monopoly grants for cable TV service, but all of them expired in the 1990s to early 2000s.
The thing you're looking for is "natural monopoly" [investopedia.com]. This is entirely a feature of the free market in a situation with high start-up costs and an established incumbent.
Re: (Score:2)
Have fun losing your internet every time a cloud goes overhead.
Clouds absorb strongly at 22.24 GHz, (1.35 cm). Starlink uses bands that bracket that freq, but are far enough away that they are not attenuated by clouds.
Anyway, I live in San Jose, and haven't seen a cloud since early April.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
But that shouldn't mean they can bill you for something you aren't using and didn't order. If you're going to charge everyone, just roll it into the base price.
Re: So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
But that shouldn't mean they can bill you for something you aren't using and didn't order. If you're going to charge everyone, just roll it into the base price.
Per TFS, you can buy their router to avoid the $10/month charge. How gracious of them.
Years ago I had an interesting episode with Cox Communications, the cable-provider in our area. We were getting phone service (several lines) from them, via an outside box supplied by them. We also had our own cable modem, so we weren't paying a monthly fee for one. The cable modem was rather new at the time and it took some effort to set it up (with some nice help from a technician on their end) but since then it has worked fine.
Then we started having intermittent problems with our phone lines. They would work, and then they wouldn't. And then start working. And then stop. And so on. We called up Cox to diagnose the problem. They claimed there was something wrong with the outside box, but hey, don't worry, we are transitioning our customers to a new indoor boxI Yeah, that's it!
The catch? The new indoor box also operates as a router, and they charge us to rent it. And we need two of them, to support the number of lines we need. And if our power goes off, I'm guessing we have no phone service from them.
Part of me thinks there was nothing wrong with the outside box, and this was all a scheme to transition us to their indoor routers. Routers that now make our own router redundant.
Re: So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of me thinks there was nothing wrong with the outside box, and this was all a scheme to transition us to their indoor routers. Routers that now make our own router redundant.
Possibly, but it's likely simpler. Check back when they started offering higher speeds in various areas, then check to see if the dates match when you started having problems. If they do, then you can almost bet that they were doing one of two things. Either upgrading your headend(CMTS) regionally, or they were transitioning to hybrid fiber coax(locally) which can have issues with older modems. So here's likely what happened, cable modems get tested like DSL modems do. Which is why some modems work with some providers and not others. Whatever new hardware they were using, didn't adhere exactly to the old standards or because the modem was older it was bonding on frequencies which are now shared with things like digital TV. And because digital TV and VoD are the hot shit, they need more bandwidth. Newer cable modems don't bleed over their bonded channels like DOCSIS 2 did, or DOCSIS 3(2006), or even DOCSIS 3.1(2013).
So what was their solution? Simply "upgrade" the customer to your new modem, sell it as a convenience, and then wash their hands of having to deal with customers who bought/brought their own modem and use it as a way to phase out all the old hardware that becomes more difficult to deal with. And you can also drop recertification of old modems on your network if you have to push a firmware update out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you turn off the routing functionality on the Cocks Boks? You should be able to connect your own router to an Ethernet port on the Cocks Boks if you put it in "bridge mode."
It's easier than that.. I just wire directly to the ONT's RJ-45 port into MY router running OpenWRT. I don't want their fingers in my network nor do I want the slow down and complexity of having their router in the mix. Their router sits there, unplugged and unpowered, to be returned once I drop their service. However, at this point, paying the monthly charge for the router rental is cheaper than the alternative ISP offerings I have, so even though I don't like it, I pay it.
Just be warned.. They won't wave the fees - I tried to negotiate that but they refused, it's part of their profit structure... AND They won't support your router. So, when I have issues, I shove their router back into service, verify it's not my equipment or that they didn't change anything (like the time they switched from PPPOE to DHCP and didn't tell anybody) and call them to get it fixed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Years ago I had an interesting episode with Cox Communications, the cable-provider in our area.
[blah blah blah]
The catch? The new indoor box also operates as a router, and they charge us to rent it. And we need two of them, to support the number of lines we need. And if our power goes off, I'm guessing we have no phone service from them.
Part of me thinks there was nothing wrong with the outside box, and this was all a scheme to transition us to their indoor routers. Routers that now make our own router redundant.
You can still use your own router, and if you do you get the phone modem included for free. I have Cox too, and I pay zero rental fees even after the transition from circuit-switched to packet-switched phone networks. You are not required to use their modem for internet. In fact, in the early days of the packet-switch phone deployments they used separate modems for Internet and telephone, even if you were renting from them.
Re: Yeah, it's a support fee (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the thing. Companies can sell customers contracts to each other , but it's not just rights that transfer its responsibilities. In other words that modem he brought off version is part of that contract so it's now a Frontier modem. And that's not just for rentals but purchases. So by the same rights that lets them continue a rental , they must also honour sales and services that where part of the contract.
A proper court would swiftly slap frontiers shit down
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that every ISP has language in their contract that stipulates they can change what equipment is allowed to be used with their network at their discretion.
Verizon at any point could have said "we no longer use Verison MODEM XYZ. If you rent we will send you a replacement MODEM ZYX. If you purchased MODEM XYZ you may rent or purchase a ZYX to avoid service interruptions".
And if Verizon could do it, then Frontier could certainly do it.
A different ISP did this very thing to me to get us to upgra
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Isnâ(TM)t ISDN service still like $100+/mo if you can even still get it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That's not really how it works, and you're wasting your time.
Every time you call in for support, it costs, at the minimum $8. You have a discretionary "bucket" of money that can be spent on appeasing you. If you call in three times, your bucket I guarantee you is empty. If you want to drain the support costs, keep calling back, but don't ask for a supervisor, manager or the CEO, just call in until you've documented their inability to solve the problem, then write a letter to the office of the president of t
Re: (Score:2)
Like several countries in Europe, your cell phone service provider CANNOT sell phones. You can buy it anywhere and use it somewhere else. No locked devices.
If your right of choice was imposed unilaterally, then keep complaining and make it viral.
I'm from the EU, not entirely sure what country you're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)