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Verizon Doubles Early Termination Fee and More
An anonymous reader writes "If you buy a smartphone through Verizon, be prepared for an increase in the early termination fee. Verizon is doubling the phone-subsidy to $350. What's more, is that Verizon also actively charges customers for accidental data transmissions of as little as 0.02kb. 'They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch 'Get it now' or 'Mobile Web'—usually a single key like an arrow key. [...] The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn't matter; they've told me that ANY data--even one kilobyte--is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.'"
I hate Verizon even more now, I didn't think it was possible.
And yet people make fun of me for using a TracFone, for about only $9 per month.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I understand, on principle why they charge early termination fees. $350 for a smartphone seems extreme, but taking the new Droid for example, the phone costs $550 without a plan and the customer gets it for $200 which is right in line. What doesn't make sense is the fact that if I cancel my contract 1 year and 11 months in, I'm expected to pay the whole termination fee, despite the fact that Verizon has already made back $335 of it. That's just abussive. Termination fees should be proportional to the amount of the contract you are terminating and capped at the amount of subsidization on the phone.
If you use data, it seems reasonable to me to charge a fee even if you just made "a mistake".
Agreed...but the issue is not about paying for the 0.2kb HTTP request you just made, but rather paying for an entire MB worth of data. It's not like billing per kilobyte or even per BYTE is technically infeasible, so why can't you pay for a fractional MB if that's what you use? In fact, there is absolutely no justifiable technical reason for this -- it's pure asshat accounting. This is like plugging in a desk lamp into your wall outlet for 5 minutes and ComEd charging you for an entire kWh.
You know it's asshat-ish when even AT&T has a better policy.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
You would be right if the contract actually worked both ways. If you have problem with your service, or a billing dispute, or any of a number of other problems, their answer is likely to be "Too bad."
The customer is left with two choices - a very costly and unlikely to succeed lawsuit, or to walk. Taking your business elsewhere is sometimes the only effective protest against a corporate bully.
Haven't you noticed? Nowadays we don't vote with our wallets any more, we just dash to the lowest up front cost and then start bitching when we realize we can't act like children. Then we do it again with the next company, because we now "hate" the first.
My Sig: SEGV
The problem for me isn't that they have ETF fees, in fact given most phones have a subsidy I under stand that. My problem is that you cannot sign a contract without an ETF even if you provide your own phone. On top of that if you buy a phone without a subsidy it's not like you can negotiate a service discount with Verizon. You pay the same amount in either case and that's not really fair.
If Verizon actually cared about the customer they would offer a choice of the following two plan options.
1. Subsidized phone, contract, and ETF. You pay for you phone over the life of your contract, basically you're leasing the phone.
2. Unsubsidized phone, no contract, no ETF, discounted plan rate. You buy the phone outright since you paid full price for it you should save the difference between the price you paid and the subsidized price over the same length of time as the contract from option 1.
In fact at one point I was going to sign up for a plan with Verizon and bring my own phone, but even if I didn't get a new phone from them to setup new service I had to agree to a 1 year contract which included an ETF. There was NO way to avoid the contract.
This entire subsidy and ETF thing on your phone reminds me of old MA Bell. Before the original AT&T got broken up due to being a monopoly it wasn't actually possible for you to buy a telephone. You HAD to lease the phone from the phone company, and the phone company owned your phone. You basically got whatever phone Ma Bell wanted you to have. Cellphone companies are in that position now. While they say you "buy" your phone, you're really leasing it with no option to truly own it. If these companies were forced to offer a choice of phones, and didn't have these crazy contracts to hide behind I'm sure the cost of cellphone handsets would drop along through real competition.
Using the DROID as an example:
The DROID with no contract is $560.
Math with the current termination fee:
$200 for the phone +
$175 to immediately break your contract =
$375 (You save $185 over the no-contract price)
Math with the new termination fee:
$200 for the phone +
$350 to immediately break your contract =
$550 (You save $10 over the no-contract price)
Either way you save more than simply buying the phone without a contract. The new fee is high, but I can understand their reasoning.
I have a woman and money. Life is good.
First rule of Verizon: the people in the stores know nothing and are not backed up by the home office.
This means the people in the stores will tell you things that are completely wrong. This can result in your being charged extra for things because the people in the stores have no ability to enforce their promises. The 800 number is the only "customer service" that exists for Verizon. Even at a "store manager" level, they have no power, no training and no ability to get anything done. This pretty much means they are there to dial the phone and put the customer on the phone with the 800 number customer service people.
The stores seem to exist to provide an image of local, in person support when none really exists. I have dealt with some good stores and some bad stores, but over all it doesn't make any difference - because the manager can promise you something or interpret some vague statement for you and then you get a bill that says exactly the opposite. Calling the 800 number gets responses like "they shouldn't have told you that" and worse.
End result is very simple. Verizon stores are perhaps a place to pick up a phone. They cannot do anything more than that for you. Expect nothing and you will not be disappointed.
I was on Verizon for several years. After a phone went bad (dropped in a stream), I went back to get a new one and they required me to change my cell plan to a new plan where nights and weekends moved an hour later. Well, that was somewhat annoying having it move to 8:00 because most of the people I call are two time zones over. Unfortunately, that phone was an utter piece of excrement and after a few months, it started dropping calls very frequently. I called Verizon to complain, and they said there was a tower down that might be affecting things. A few months later, I moved to a different area where there was no such problem and still dropped calls. After a few months of this, I decided to get another new phone that actually worked.
Now they wanted me to move my nights and weekends to 9:00 P.M. I basically said "No way in hell. Can I get a phone without changing contracts if I pay full price?" They said no, and their only suggestion was to buy a phone on eBay. I looked at my options, priced out what I would get from other carriers, and switched to AT&T the next day. I even kept my old phone number. Even though AT&T's nights and weekends started at 9:00 just like Verizon's, I got so many more minutes than with my Verizon plan that it more than covered the difference. And when Cingular took them over and I changed to a plan with roll-over minutes, the difference became even more dramatic. Now, I'm on an iPhone plan. Every so often, I think about the friends and family who are still stuck on that nickel-and-dime-you-to-death Verizon network, and I feel sorry for them. AT&T sucks, too, of course, but not like Verizon does. It's good to see this news and know that they still haven't changed.
As for me, I can't wait for LTE rollouts to become widespread. At that point, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon will all be using compatible networks and people will be able to switch without changing phones. Then, these companies will have to start actually competing with each other instead of paying lip service to competing. You'll also see massive screaming to put an end to early termination fees if you provide your own equipment. Life will be better. Here's hoping, anyway. The only question is how long it will take before Sprint joins in and makes us a single-standard country as we should be....
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