Telecom

Penny foolish

Remember that bill for one bright shiny penny that we got in the mail from AT&T a while back? The usage charge assessed after we had paid our last bill in full? Remember how we were mystified about the origin of the charge? Friend JM, who knows government matters, helps us out:

Universal fee is result of 96 telecom act. It provides dough to fund access to rural and underserved schools, libraries and such. Has a bit of a checkered past, but overall on of the few parts of the act that worked for the average (and under-served Joe & Jane). I wrote an extensive paper on this in grad school.

Very good indeed, but what of the compulsive willingness of AT&T to waste printing costs and postage in sending the bill to us? We found we were not allowed to make a one cent payment electronically, so settled for paying a whole dollar, figuring that AT&T would just apply it balance as a credit.

Or, er, not.

We got this in the mail two days later.

Well. At least we’re all square.

Update: And an hour and a half later - ninety minutes after this post - we got proof positive that we are indeed all square with AT&T:

I don’t have the words to describe how I feel about this.