CUB Helps ‘Astounded’ Consumer Capture $660 Phone Credit
Sept. 24, 2009 — One unnecessary telephone charge is bad enough, but imagine paying the same bad charge—twice—on every monthly bill for nearly a decade.

That’s what happened to Nancy until a trip to a CUB phone-bill clinic landed her a $660 credit, and gave her an education in the dreaded “inside wire maintenance plan”—the poster child of bad phone charges.

“I just always felt like my bill was a little too high, but I didn’t know enough about what I was being charged for to know if I was getting ripped off,” the Carbondale office manager said.

CUB has been on a mission over the last few years to get people off the inside wire maintenance plans. (AT&T calls it “Line-Backer.”) It’s an insurance plan that covers pricey repairs to the telephone wires inside the walls of a home. The problem is those repairs are needed about once every 20 to 30 years, on average.

When Nancy attended CUB’s recent Carbondale clinic, she learned that the “inside wire maintenance plan,” for which Verizon now charges about $7 a month, was optional. She planned to march home and promptly cancel the service.

Then, CUB staffer Bryan McDaniel took a look at her bill and immediately noticed that she was getting charged for not one, but two maintenance plans­—and she didn’t even have two lines! To make matters worse, she had been paying for the service since 2000!

Bryan contacted Verizon, which quickly called Nancy and gave her a $660.43 credit, including taxes.

“I was astounded,” Nancy said. “I told everyone at work, ‘You’re not going to believe this!’ So I have thrown CUB’s name around pretty regularly at the office.”

Nancy describes CUB’s staff as “very knowledgeable, professional, and dedicated to their work.”

As for Bryan, she said: “Mr. McDaniel was very good at translating deceptive phone-bill gibberish into something I think most people could actually understand....I told him I’m going to put (CUB) on my Christmas list this year.”