Screwed By Verizon

Porfirio

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Aug 30, 2005
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Apparently with the ?blessing?of our Government Verizon has carte blanch to charge us exhorbitant and unethical fees for their services. Please watch English Channels (NBC, CBS, ABC & CNN) on your cable service, and note that Verizon is advertising FULL service, including cable TV, high speed Internet connection and long distance (all calls within the continental US, PUERTO RICO and CANADA) for $99 US per month. Interestingly Our Friends & Relatives living in NY can purchase real vallue calling cards, for example a $5.00 calling card good for 90 to 120 minutes to telephone Family & Friends in the Dominican Republic are available. Similar calling cards are available in Miami & throughout the US. Another telephone Company VONAGE offers unlimited local and long distance calls within the US, Canada & Puerto Rico for $24.99 per month. Watts line (800 free calls) are not available with Verizon, and if you must make an 800 number telephone call, Verizon announces that ?YOU WILL BE CHARGED AT THE INTERNATIONAL RATE OF $40 CENTS PER MINUTE?. Almost anywhere in the world 800 numbers are free, only DR has the distinction of paying extortion to Verizon. Once again our illustrious Government permits this thievery to continue. The consensus of opinions is payoffs to those in power. It is noted that Verizon has higher (more profitable) per capita income from revenues generated from the Dominican Republic than the US market. There is no competition in the DR, (is Tri Com or Orange competition ?) while fierce competition within the US keeps Verizon and other telephone companys in line our ?leaders?do nothing on our behalf to control the escalating outragiously inflated charges levied by Verizon.
 

carina

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Mar 13, 2005
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Verizon has big banners out in Puerto Plata now for big discounts on calls to Italy, Puerto Rico, Usa, Canada..
Just saw it on Beller.
 

J D Sauser

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Nov 20, 2004
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Porfirio said:
... and if you must make an 800 number telephone call, Verizon announces that ¨YOU WILL BE CHARGED AT THE INTERNATIONAL RATE OF $40 CENTS PER MINUTE¨. Almost anywhere in the world 800 numbers are free, only DR has the distinction of paying extortion to Verizon.


I take it you are mentioning calling a US 1-800 number, right?
Well that numer is only free is you call FROM the US, which when calling form the DR is not exactly the case.
Most countries will not even let you call a outside 1-800 number at all, which can be problematic at times as most business in the States tend to ignore that fact and remain unreachable from the outside because they forgot to post a regular number on the side.

If you want to call US based 1-800 number from the anywhere else than the US for really free, then you might find it more suitable to use internet based phone operator (E.g: www.skype.com).

I hope this is of help... J-D.
 
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Squat

Tropical geek in Las Terrenas
Jan 1, 2002
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Well, just my two centavos :
We are paying one of the most expensive internet access of the Americas...
I wish there was a couple of other telephone company (apart from Tricom, which belongs partly to Verizon) who would offer internet access, so with the comcurence, maybe prices would go down a bit...
 

riravaga

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Feb 24, 2005
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You are right, I don´t know how the goverment wants that more people has access to internet when you must pay for to have an internet account and pay aditional money for the time of the connection in the case of dial up service.

With the equivalent to 170 domican pesos 5.00 usd.$ you can´t speak 2 hrs as our family do in the usa.

The offer a phoneline with ADSL for 49.99 usd$ 1,700.00 dominican pesos, and here they offer the ADSL for that amount where is not include the mouthly fee of the service.

An still the president of verizon said the DR has still the lowes prices in LA for telephone services.
 
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Texas Bill

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Feb 11, 2003
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Has anyone who has DSL service ---

in the DR ever oticed the "transfer rate in KBS" of that service?
Most of the time it's around 24-28 KBS. Now, what was the trandfer rate of your "dial-up" service before switching? Yeah, around 35-50 KBS. Remarkable difference isn't it. I've concluded that the only advantaage of DSL here is the ability to have incoming calls at the sametime as Internet service.
I'm positive the phone Co ahs dedicated one of their "Other" outdated servers to DSL.
Anyone know about this???

Texas Bill
 

Chris

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Oct 21, 2002
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Texas Bill said:
Anyone know about this???
Texas Bill

Yes, we had three technicians in our office for four days, scratching their heads and making secret phone calls to 'la oficina' as the speed did not want to do what it was promised to do. :classic: Eventually, when they figured we are not going to go away quietly, they did the right things server side and now we cruise! Keep complaining! Keep calling!
 

project9

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May 29, 2004
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Texas Bill: the average transfer rate of a dialup connection is 5 kb/s not 35 or 50 kb/s as you said. The average speed of a 256 kbps dsl line is 25-30 kb/s anywhere in the world, why do you want it to be different here?

Porfirio: have you noticed that this is a market oriented economy?
 

Texas Bill

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project9 said:
Texas Bill: the average transfer rate of a dialup connection is 5 kb/s not 35 or 50 kb/s as you said. The average speed of a 256 kbps dsl line is 25-30 kb/s anywhere in the world, why do you want it to be different here?

Porfirio: have you noticed that this is a market oriented economy?

Well, live and learn!

Just going by what I saw/am seeing on the transfer rates on the screen during download, that's all.

Texas Bill
 

Texas Bill

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Feb 11, 2003
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project9--where do you get the----

5kbs rate from??

Modems today are rated at anywhere from 33 to 56 kbs in ANY language, foreign or domestic.
The average DSL is toued to be in the 100+kbs category, so where are you coming from?? Obviously NOT from THIS planet!

Even my 56K FAX/MODEM PCMCIA CARD was delivering over 30+kbs before I switched to DSL!

I think you don't know what your talking about. Care to go into more detail???

Texas Bill
 

Squat

Tropical geek in Las Terrenas
Jan 1, 2002
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modem speed is average 50kb/s, while transfer is usually around 3.5 (50 divided by 8)...
adsl, if it is 256kb/s will usually average a transfer rate of 30 something...

I had dial-up and flash, so I can tell you that as 1st hand info...

the only trick Verizon perform on us is the price (too expensive...), not the service, which is quite good.
 

Texas Bill

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Squat said:
modem speed is average 50kb/s, while transfer is usually around 3.5 (50 divided by 8)...
adsl, if it is 256kb/s will usually average a transfer rate of 30 something...

I had dial-up and flash, so I can tell you that as 1st hand info...

the only trick Verizon perform on us is the price (too expensive...), not the service, which is quite good.

Squat---

Thanks for the explanation. I stand corrected.

xxx---9. Please accept my apologies for my response to your comment.

Mea Culpa.

Texas Bill
 

Squat

Tropical geek in Las Terrenas
Jan 1, 2002
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It seems that Tricom offers slightly cheaper rates for either dial-up and adsl. But where I live, Tricom is not there, only Verizon. For my cell phone, I use Orange, but for my adsl, I don't have any other option...

Satellite would be an option, but the service is terrible, comparated to flash.
 

riravaga

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Feb 24, 2005
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Yes but both in the dial up service charge the minutes of connection as a local call, so if you don´t have a package with all free ocals minutes you are burned.
 

Squat

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Verizon dial-up is unlimited, and only functions with free local minutes.... Don't know about Tricom...
 

riravaga

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If you don?t have free locals minutes plan you can?t contract dial up services because they charge the time of connection in your local minutes time.
 

mondongo

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Jan 1, 2002
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thats right, project9

The reason for the confusion lies in the naming convention.
1. modems tend to advertise speed in kilo bits per second: kb/s
2. when your browser downloads a file, it normally uses kilo Bytes per second: KB/s

3. there are 8 bits in 1 byte, so the maximum transfer rate your browser will show for a 56K modem is 7KB/s.
4. the maximum your browser will show for a 256K DSL is 32KB/s.

The confusion just boils down to naming conventions and arithmetic.


project9 said:
Texas Bill: the average transfer rate of a dialup connection is 5 kb/s not 35 or 50 kb/s as you said. The average speed of a 256 kbps dsl line is 25-30 kb/s anywhere in the world, why do you want it to be different here?
 

Conchman

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Squat said:
Verizon dial-up is unlimited, and only functions with free local minutes.... Don't know about Tricom...


I believe the Verizon business plan connection has unlimited minutes, personal home connections you pay by the minute. I have a business connection at my house for that reason.
 

Squat

Tropical geek in Las Terrenas
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No, Verizon doesn't make you pay by the minute on their Home dial-up plan. Yhis is 1st hand info.