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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.
Don't want to use the data service? There's a scam for that. Want to upgrade your phone? There's a scam for that. No matter what you want to do, we'll get your money. Because there's a scam for that.
people were using the buy one Blackberry get one free promotion, canceling service, and selling that second Blackberry at a profit. What, are you feeling bad because you didn't think of it sooner? So am I :-)
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.
Is this some kind of hit piece to try and convince people not to use Verizon instead of AT&T? If you use data, it seems reasonable to me to charge a fee even if you just made "a mistake". It's not like international roaming is any more lenient.
I don't have a problem actually paying for data use. If I fire up a web browser and surf around a bit, go ahead and bill me.
The problem I have is that on my phone the web browser is bound to the up direction on the circular directional wheel... With the OK button in the middle. I have frequently hit the up direction accidentally when I meant to press OK. And that launches the web browser. It doesn't ask for confirmation... Just pops up the web browser and immediately starts loading a page.
Obviously I hit another button to cancel the web browser and go back to what I'm doing... But Verizon rounds pretty much any data transfer up to the nearest MB. So I'm billed for at least 1 MB even though I only actually transferred a couple K of data.
This was enough of a nuisance, not just for me but also my wife and son, that I had to block data entirely on our account. It would be nice to have it available if I needed it, but that just isn't possible. It's entirely too easy to wind up with a pile of little charges.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
My problem would be with
Guy/Girl: "Hey Verizon, can you block my data service so I don't accidentally use it?"
Verizon: "Sure we can. (click)"
Guy/Girl: "Uh, Why is my bill showing charges for data, that I have disabled?"
Verizon: "Because silly.... we have to send you data to tell you that you can't use the data plan!"
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
Tracfone has a brand, Straight Talk (I have no affiliation and that's not a referral link), with phones available at WalMart with unlimited voice and text plus 30 MB data for $45/30 days. Prepaid being only for low-usage folks is a bygone idea.
Also, unlike most other services, with TracFone you don't own your number.
Google Voice to the rescue.
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.
As much as I can bash Verizon for their gestapo-like moves in other areas, at least they've given us the tools to completely disable features like these through account management online.
Cool. I never really understood what "Stockholm Syndrome" meant until now.
I was able to port the number from a Tracfone to an AT&T phone about a year and a half ago.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Also, unlike most other services, with TracFone you don't own your number. You decide to switch carriers and your phone number goes with it. Personally keeping my number is worth quite a bit more than $350. To each his own though.
According to TracFone's FAQ. They will allow you to transfer your number out of TracFone, but your personal information on the TracFone account must match the information on the new carrier's account. Source
What could be worse? They seem deliberately design the interface to trap users into triggering this extra usages. I have a Samsung SGH-T509 from T-mobile. Once you take a picture with this phone, it will display "Send to : My Album" with the right (yah, most people are right-handed too) button conveniently displaying "Yes". Every person that ever used my phone, including myself, would almost automatically click Yes; saving to the album sounds like the right thing to do after taking a picture. It turns out My Album is an online service, saving to there initiates a data transmission which is costly if you don't have a data plan. If you want to save locally, you need to click the left button (now labeled "Options",) scroll down to select and click"Send to", scroll down to and click "My photos". I figured this trick out after the first time I hit the Yes button, but still making mistakes from time to time. My wife never seems to remember this trick until it is too late.
You bet the marketing people figured out most people wouldn't want a data plan and need to trick you into sending data. trick or treat.
The last time I was on Verizon I went to get a new phone after having one for 3 years. They told me I wasn't eligible for a new phone, because my wife got one the year before. We had a shared family plan.
I found it in writing where it stipulated where we were both eligible for new phones every two years. They insisted that if I didn't get mine at the same time she got hers, then I missed my window. I was livid. I kept going back to the Verizon store (and waiting 30 minutes to talk to a person each time) and trying to talk to different people.
Eventually I said, I'll just pay my $150 cancellation fee, which is cheaper than paying full retail on a phone, since they wouldn't give me a new phone after two years.
They then said, I'd have to pay $350. They consider family plans two seperate lines. I'd pay $175 each. Funny how it is two lines for cancellation purposes, but one plan as far as getting new phones. The weird part is that I was convinced my cancellation fee was $150 when I signed the contract.
They explained that all prices and fees can be changed at any time during the contract, and that raised my cancellation fee over the life of the contract. I was pretty livid. I ended up waiting a few months and then jumping to AT&T. Now I have a phone that doesn't get signal in half the town, but I never want to go back to Verizon's service again.
Everytime a Verizon rep talks to me and tries to get me to switch, they insist they'd never pull a stunt where they wouldn't give me a phone, and yet in talking to two store managers, and calling the 1-800 number, that is exactly what they did to me.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What you are saying is good if it wasn't false.
No Contract Required -- New Month-To-Month Agreement Gives Verizon Wireless Customers Even More Freedom
No, you don't get a plan discount, but I don't believe that the plan pricing has to do with the ETF or the subsidy anyway.
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....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
*IF* you act on it in a certain period, usually 30-60 days. You can't just ride it for another year, and then say "Oh, that was unacceptable to me" and get out that way. If you don't immediately act, that's viewed as performance of the contract, implying its acceptability to you.
Please, for the love of God and all that is decent in this world, steer clear of Verizon Wireless!!!
I am a Verizon Wireless customer. They make "horrible customer service" sound like something to aspire to.
They haven't been able to get my bill "right" for months. Every single month there are random charges tacked on, that they cannot explain when I call. Until recently, they've cancelled these charges with good apology. But now?
I have two phones suspended because they are lost. Originally, I was told I could suspend them indefinitely. Then I was told that I could only suspend them month-by-month. Then I was was told I could suspend them three months at a time. Now, they're telling me that I can only suspend 6 months per year. None of which was mentioned when I asked up front, and none of which is ever consistently said after the fact.
So I decided to buy out the contract. Get this: Not only are they're charging me for two months' service for two phones I don't even have, they're charging me for an entire two months of service for both of those two phones AFTER the contract has been cancelled by being bought out!
If you are ever, EVER tempted to go Verizon, RUN LIKE HELL OUT OF THERE. They make a pack of lying vultures being eaten by a horde of hungry lawyers seem friendly!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.