If there's one area where telecom companies are far more innovative than any other industry, it's in their remarkable creativity in coming up with new fees to charge their customers. One reader thinks he may have discovered the very epitome of this with his local phone company, Windstream, when he tried to cancel his long distance service.

"Somehow I knew it would have to come to this -- Windstream has figured out how to charge you for no service. I tried to cancel my long distance service yesterday -- we have cell phones and haven't made a long distance call on a land line for at least a year, so why pay $4.50 per month?"

"When I cancelled it, the Windstream rep says that I really haven't turned off long distance. If someone visits and makes a long distance call, since I'm not covered by a plan, that carrier can charge 'whatever they want.' That's kind of scary, but I explained that she'd misunderstood -- I want to turn off long distance. Windstream says that they can do that, but they'll have to charge me $2 per month to NOT have any long distance."

"And don't get me started on the 70 cents per month fee because I'm using touch tone phones instead of rotary phones. But they tell me that their service protection plan includes replacement of phones if they go bad. Maybe I'll report one that's dead and ask for a rotary replacement since I'm tired of that fee. I was curious and didn't find anyone on Google that still sells rotary phones for under $100, so I wonder what Windstream would do."