It’s listed on your cell phone bill as a $1.20 “911 Service Fee,” and you pay it every month to New York state.
But an investigative report in the Syracuse Post-Standard’s Sunday editions finds that only 6 cents actually ends up at a 911 center.
The fee – intended to upgrade 911 services – was implemented in the early 1990s. The Post-Standard report details millions in unrelated spending over the past six years.
That includes $24 million for overtime at agencies including the departments of corrections and parks, and $1 million to house and feed National Guard soldiers patrolling nuclear power plants.
Just last year, two agencies – technology and agriculture – used almost $60,000 in 911 fees to pay their own cell-phone bills.
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7 Responses
Hopefully there will be a class action suit to get any money not used for 911 implementation back into the hands of those who paid this egregious fee.
Pythetic! Everyone should contact the District Attorney’s office and give a piece of their mind make sure to get a claim number and follow through you may end up with a nice check plus compensation
Pythetic! Everyone should contact the District Attorney’s office and give a piece of your mind make sure to get a claim number and follow through you may end up with a nice check plus compensation, this is an utter an extreme violation, I feel abused, broached, and betrayed, and I’m sure many others out there feel the same way so please follow up! 800.771.7755 / 845.486.2300
The problem is, at the end of the day, after it’s all filed and solved, we’ll probably each get what we paid, i.e. $1.20 or something like that. It’s worth a shot though…
chaimss: “we’ll probably each get what we paid, i.e. $1.20 or something like that” Thats $1.20 a month! And if you have more then one phone, thats $1.20 per-a-phone. If you had your plan from when the 911 charges started, you should get back $1.20 per-a-month, per-a-phone. That is $14.40 for each phone, each year. Lets get moving on this case. Hatzlacha!
supercilios: there is no word pythetic, you just look foolish.
At first I was confused when I saw a headline with the word “abuse” in it on this site, but then I realized it was a cause we can legitimately get upset about. Yeah! Rah rah rah! I’m paying an extra $1.20 a month for my cell phone! What a messed up world, right, where people can get away with something like that?