Alec Saunders SquawkBox

The practice of burying hidden fees on bills, and how it rips consumers off is gaining some visibility:

Broadband Reports: companies are "taking business expenses and breaking them out as below the line fees, so they can misleadingly advertise a lower rate".

MSNBC: "Those $5 and $10 charges really add up. Even with these limitations, Americans told us they lose $946 to sneaky fees every year, enough to stock a sizable retirement fund."

Michigan Telephone: "People, please, stop just putting up with corporations stealing from you.  Would you let someone walk into your home and smile as they carted off your possessions, or took a few bills out of your wallet or purse? Heck, would you let your kids do that? Then why do you let big corporations do it to you, without a word of protest??"

Here in Canada there's one wireless fee that grates on everybody's nerves.  It's the "system access fee". There isn't a carrier that doesn't charge six or seven bucks a month under the line item called system access, so you can't even switch carriers to avoid paying the darn thing!  When you ask about it, you get a shrug along with the comment "everybody charges it". 

Mention it the next time you talk with your carrier.  I always do, and I always force the CSR to explain what it's for to me.  Then I ask them to remove this non-service fee from my bill.  Every time I talk with them, though, they politely refuse. It costs the carrier $25 to $30 per call to receive my call.  Three or four calls per year asking about what that "system access fee" is on my statement will wipe out any profits they make from nickeling and diming me.   It's a little subversive, but it's just the sort of thing that appeals to the Canadian in me.  And perhaps if enough people did the same, the bean counting MBAs who work in product management at Canadian carriers  would see the logic of discontinuing this practice.  

What the right hand gives, the left hand takes away.  At least it seems that way in the world of Facebook's schizophrenic support for developers using the News Feed.  A few weeks back, Facebook made it possible for developers to add stories to users' news feeds even when the user doesn't have that application installed.  It made for a nice marketing opportunity for developers to promote their applications via feed stories.  Now, the Facebook platform is implementing a feed ranking system that will (among other things) demote stories on the feed where users don't have the actual application installed.  

Given the massive volume of stuff that comes to me in my newsfeed, I'm somewhat in favor of this development.  What would be most useful to me, however, would be a way to block all messages from particular applications — feed messages + invites.  That would surely boost the quality of my feed and at the same time leave me with more control over what's in that feed without having to resort to an automated ranking system.  

Sometimes it's the simplest solutions that make the most sense.  

My RSS feed is jammed this morning, as it seems everyone has an opinion on the announcements made by Steve Jobs at MacWorld yesterday. Judging from the volume of material hitting blogs in the last 24 hours, it looks as if there's plenty to talk about, too!  So join us on the MacWorld edition Squawk Box at 8 AM and have your say!