Slashdot Mirror
FCC Inquires About Controversial Verizon Fees
olsmeister writes "As previously noted here on Slashdot, Verizon Wireless has been increasing their early termination fees and actively charging non-data customers who accidentally press the wrong button and go online. The FCC has now sent them a letter asking why. The PDF of the letter can be viewed online. Maybe someone at the FCC does read Slashdot."
Maybe someone at the FCC does read Slashdot
Or they read New York Times, which Slashdot quoted in the said article.
Is to protect the people. I believe protecting us from getting screwed by gigantic corporations is just as valid as protecting us from invasion.
Maybe letters from you don't work, but letters from the FCC usually work. I've had a problem with a bank once, I wrote them and they completely ignored me. After 30 days, I've asked for help from a governmental organization, they wrote to the bank and a couple of days letter I had my answer AND the problem was fixed thanks to a simple inquiry sent by the right person/organization.
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
The FCC gave Verizon two weeks to reply. And when a government entity or a large company sends someone a letter as serious as this, it usually has a statement to the effect "We'll take your silence to imply refusal to cooperate. If push comes to shove, we will take it to court."
This is what the FCC is supposed to be doing.
Not chasing half-second nipslips because 4 uptight housewives in Idaho get snippy about their kids seeing something they don't want them to see, after they're supposed to be in bed and asleep already.
What's funny right now is that I constantly hear from reviews, friends, and fellow iPhone users how much they think AT&T sucks and want to move to Verizon. Personally I think this is all BS, and would love some more european and canadian cell phone companies to invade the US and finally give us some real competition in this country, or at least have the FCC standup and hold our carriers more accountable and stop the mergers.
ALL the US carriers suck in general! People may think Verizon's coverage is the best, compared to AT&T, but notice how they are competing on coverage, and not dropped calls, network speed, features (you can't check email at the same time you are on a call with Verizon... anywhere, with any phone), etc. Also notice how all the services cost around $80 or so for the minimum smartphone contract. Notice how they all have sneaky overblown hidden fees. Notice how the per txt fee and monthly charge for Txtx keeps going up and up and up. Notice how their customer service is slightly below or slightly above average. Notice how they all lock you into specific phones. Notice how they all lock you into two year contracts unless you are willing to buy one of their cheapo phones for a pay as you go contract. Notice how all the cheapo phones break if you sneeze the wrong way.
Verizon is one level of shit, and AT&T is another level of shit. And we americans are forced to deal with these levels of shit, and we go around saying one is so much greater than the other.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
They should also make text messaging free.
That's right. I wrote free.
If you put the price of a voice call, in 3 seconds to the (stupidly) expensive $.15 per minute, and compare it to the 3 seconds it would take to send a text message, you will find it negligible: .15/60 = $.0025 per second. $.0025 * 3 seconds / 10kbps for the voice data transfer = $.00075 dollars per kilobyte (aside: $.771 dollars per megabyte).
Now let's say, for the sake of generosity, it takes a 16KB packet total, up and down for ack, all carriers, etc., to send a text message.
It would cost $0.012 by my numbers...
Draw your own conclusions, I am just playing with units.
I think it would be a better use of the FCC's limited time and resources if they were to hold Verizon to it's promise to open up their network.
Verizon already started to cover that with the DROID DOES campaign. But even if you agree with Verizon's ETF practices, I still commend the FCC for looking into the problem of making the "bill me $1.99 for browsing the web" button so easy to accidentally press.
No. Most businesses do that. You can substitute "companies" for "telcos". That's how the free market is supposed to work.
Competition keeps the prices down, not companies being reasonable.
So the question should be: Is the telco market perhaps too controlled and not free enough?
American companies don't make money, they steal money. They lie and use "tricks and traps" to pick people's pockets. This crap with Verizon is typical. In California, AT&T submitted a terms of use agreement that was 1500 pages. I'm sure that it contained provisions that would have allowed them to take your house or savings. Even the almost useless state utilities commission rejected it, because the law states that these agreements must be understandable.
What kind of capitalism is this, exactly? The basic theory of capitalism says that buyers and sellers make informed decisions based on open information. How does changing the contract unilaterally fit in? First they write terms of service that allow them to change the rules without negotiation, then they double the cost of canceling. I know what the dumb ass libertarians and republicans will say: 'if you don't like it, you can quit before the change takes place.' This is bullshit because the cost of getting a new high end phone and new carrier is greater then the cost of keeping the service. How many people really change service before the term is up under any conditions?
And this thing with getting charged for a couple of bucks for hitting a button when you did not sign up for the service? That is flat out and out theft. It has nothing to do with actual capitalism. What good or service do you get for pushing the wrong button on a cell phone?
And what about the banks sorting ATM charges so users are charged the maximum overdraft fees? They sort the charges from biggest to smallest so you hit the overdraft at the beginning of the sequence and every charge after you go over the limit has an overdraft fee. Even if it is in the fine print somewhere it is stealing from consumers. Keep in mind that ATM overdraft fees were $38 Billion for the last year of published data. Not exactly chump change.
I am pro-capitalism, but there is no way the system in the US is actual capitalism. It's all about big corporate interests buying the government and then looting the economy. That's why the US is in a long term economic decline. Corporate america has adopted a model based on orgaized crime, not capitalism.
Does Verizon allow you to block data?
My wife's parents ended up with some incidental charges for accidental data access on their phones, called AT&T, and they refunded the amounts and asked if they wanted a "data block" put in place to prevent them from accidentally accessing data again. "Yes" "OK, we're all done, thanks for calling AT&T". Next day, my father-in-law tried the data access, and it came up "unavailable", and they've never seen a charge since.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Actually, SMS isn't quite that simple. They are (at least on GSM - I don't know for sure about other network types like modern 3G arrangements) sent out-of-band on a low traffic control channel. That is where the "140 7 bit characters" limit comes from", to fit into the maximum packet size used on that channel. You can effectively DoS a cell wrt SMS capability by sending as little as 40 messages per second.
Having said that, many price plans and offers over here offer so many text messages in the package that they are effectively free (even sometimes on PAYG). I'm sure they claw back the missing income by other means though.
My Father died in October. He had a shared Verizon account with my Mother. They charged Mom $100 to terminate his account, even after I explained that he was dead. I wanted to terminate Mom's account as well, as she only talked to Dad on her cell phone. They refused to do it without having to pay more than $100 beyond the first $100! They told me Mom had to keep the account until it expired in July. While she racks up charges for a service she will not use; Her income is now very limited, she should be using the money to buy food and keep the house heated. A bit off topic to this tread but all of the paperwork and people you have to contact when someone dies is an absolute nightmare. People have been dieing for a really long time now, you would think it would be an easy one click process. Who is up for stating such a service? Oh right, Amazon already has that patented...