The comment doesn't exactly prove anything, but I've always suspected that all the infrastructure required to support complex product offerings with per-minute, per-feature, per-byte accounting added significant cost - to the point that offering uniform full featured accounts with minimal controls would deliver more value to the customer and more profit to the telecom.
I don't understand how this is an advantage for Verizon. It would seem that it would be easier just to tell the person what the bill is for. Court must be much more expensive.
Whenever someone refers to this conversation, I think to myself: "I should listen to that again, for the sake of entertainment." I sit down with a cup of coffee, ready for a good laugh.
Within 5 minutes, I remember: There is (almost) nothing more excruciating than listening to that clip. Makes me lose faith in education every time.
And yet the great irony here is that by being idiots, they virtually guaranteed that someone with the means and time would go and do it. Exact same situation as the PS3 keys.
Ultimately, it still seems that she did not "win" anything except knowing the telephone numbers that made up the $4.19 charge
In order to provide detailed billing, Verizon still claimed that customers are required to pay a one time fee of $40.00 USD, plus an additional $0.02 USD per call to be listed on the bill, which for regional exchange calls could be around 50% of the price of the call itself. The ruling of this case makes it appear that this "feature" was available long ago, but since she was not subscribed to detailed billing, they told her to fight their policy in court, and she lost because she couldn't prove "... that the rate in the tariff is unreasonable or that detailed billing of residential measured use calls is feasible."
