Daniel R.

I've had the same phone plan since I switched to a G1 back in Oct of 2008. I have a grandfathered time and text voice plan and an unlimited data plan. As a result unless I'm traveling and incurring roaming charges, my "Monthly Recurring Charges" have been the same for the last 18 months. However, during that time the "Other Charges" and "Taxes & Surcharges" have gone up from $3.86 to $6.47!

Here's a little historical breakdown:

Due Date	Other Charges	Taxes & Surcharges
Jan 2009	Regulatory Program Fees: 0.86	Federal Universal Service Fund: 0.68 State Sales Tax: 1.57 State 911: 0.75
Jun 2009	Regulatory Program Fees: 0.86	Federal Universal Service Fund: 0.64 State Sales Tax: 1.57 State 911: 0.75
Jan 2010	Regulatory Program Fees: 1.21	Federal Universal Service Fund: 0.59 State Sales Tax: 1.99 State 911: 0.75
Jun 2010	Regulatory Program Fees: 1.21	Federal Universal Service Fund: 0.94 State Sales Tax: 3.57 State 911: 0.75

The recent changes in State Sales Tax is confusing me the most. It's like they changed what they collect sales tax on. Anyone else seeing strange fees?

Tags: taxes tmobile

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are very few companies that I've done business with for many years that haven't undergone a name change during that time. T-Mobile for awhile was Voicestream and before that, when I signed up with them back in June of 1998, they were called Omnipoint. In fact my GSM SIM card still says Omnipoint on it. E*Trade, well E*Trade Bank in particular, used to be called Telebank when I first started doing business with them back in Mar of 1999. If you haven't guessed, I'm also fairly loyal to companies, if they continue to offer the features I want at a reasonable value. I'm sure there are others but those come to mind first since my mobile phone is sitting on my desk next to a letter from E*Trade Financial/Bank.

It seems that the reason I signed up with Telebank many years ago, which was their killer super savings account which morphed into the SmartSaver Account, is being discontinued. At the time Telebank had some of the highest interest rates available, a cool online banking site, and a few months later, cool electronic bill payment if you also had a checking account with them. This was before ING Direct and other similar financial products had really broken into the mainstream, or in some cases even existed. Alas, E*Trade has decided to convert their SmartSaver accounts into Money Market Accounts. This might be one of those times to check and see if my loyalty to them has wavered.

Tags: banking etrade history tmobile

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)