Verizon Wireless To Issue $90 Million In Refunds

tekgoblin writes "Verizon Wireless had somehow been charging customers extra money on their bills for data that they actually hadn't been using. Approximately 15 million customers were affected by the billing error. According to BGR the FCC had been pressuring Verizon to respond to the hundreds of complaints that had been piling up. So Verizon's answer was to refund all of the overcharged money as soon as possible."

Comments

And?

[Pharmboy]

At least their answer was to issue refunds.

Re:And?

[erroneus]

$90 million was no "accident." This is all standard operating procedure. In some circles, this is huge theft. If done to the government, it would result in criminal charges. Being quick to refund was nothing more than cover their asse[t]s. The telecoms are all resisting FCC inquiries and we know why... we KNEW why -- because they are all massively ripping off the public.

Re:And?

[operagost]

If done to the government, it would result in criminal charges.

Of course, if done BY the government, it would not.

Re:And?

[gorzek]

It's also hardly limited to Verizon. I've been with Sprint for several years and had a few occasions where they put strange charges on my bill. Of course, I called and complained and they took them off, saying they were "billing errors." I don't know what I'd prefer, that they're so shady they're purposely tacking bullshit charges onto people's bills, or they are so incompetent they don't know how to keep such mistakes from happening.

I can only guess how many people get those charges who never bat an eye and just pay them.

Re:And?

[commodore64_love]

And:

This is only the screwage we know about. Every day there is screwage by megacorps but happening on a smaller scale. Like when a Motel 6 manager refused to honor the 10% sale price that I had booked... and then when I called the national office, they forced him to honor the sale price, so he invented a story about how I was having sex with deskgirl, and then called the police to have me removed.

- Or the power outlet somebody buys where only 2 of the 4 outlets work.
- Or when you're charged shipping on an item that was supposed to be fre ship.
- Or the Chase website is down for two days, so you can't make payment, so you get charged a $30 late fee.
- Or you buy a DVD that is a pile of shit, but Walamrt refuses to take it back.
- Or you get fired off your job, because somebody SATS you were watching CNN video, but that's a bold-faced lie.
- Or you don't get paid your last week of wages.
- Or you had a nice cheap $20/month Dish plan, but suddenly they eliminate that package, and jack it up to $40 without telling you.
- and on and on and on.

The more stories we have like these, the more we make the People aware that they can not trust megacorps, and therefore corporate power should be limited to a bare minimum (where no power would be the ideal).

Re:And?

[mea37]

'$90 million was no "accident."'

Maybe it wasn't, but I find this "matter-of-fact" statement amusing. What, the fact that it's a large number makes the idea of an error impossible? A systematic error in their billing system - the kind of thing I have no problem believing would slip past a corporate QA department - could easily rack up $90M across the book of business before being noticed.

IT makes it possible to do everything - including screw up - a lot faster than you would imagine.

'This is all standard operating procedure'

Citation needed. If you've ever actually worked in a corporation, then you know that the management will do all manner of unethical thing, but only to the extent they can delude themselves into believing it's really ok. I've yet to meet an executive so far gone that he believes you can overcharge your customers and then repay the principal when you get caught. They like to be a lot more subtle than that.

'The telecoms are all resisting FCC inquiries'

All companies resist all manner of oversight. Oversight costs money even when you're following the rules. This doesn't mean that there should be no oversight, but it does mean that a company cannot be presumed guilty for trying to avoid oversight.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you considered moving to Europe?

Re:And?

[delinear]

It would be nice to think they were only incompetent, but you don't hear stories of people frequently receiving credit errors, or portions of their bill inexplicably removed. Either this happens a lot and people keep it quiet, or the system is set up in such a way that, if there are errors, they always go in the company's favour, or that said errors never flag internally for investigation and removal, so the customer has to do all the legwork.

Re:And?

[jlf278]

Agreed - no accident. They have posted erroneous charges to both my wireless and fios account in the past. On the fios account they removed a charge and then 5 months later re-reversed it! I have auto-bill pay, but I still check it infrequently and noticed after i had paid it. They agreed to re-re-reverse the charge, but said they would have to break it up over 6 months? whatever.

They also seem to train their reps to say anything to make a sale. I asked if they could come install fios earlier than what was available online. After working up the chain of command they agreed...then simply didn't show up. Of course by then I would have had to wait even longer for comcast. Despite all of this, I actually like Verizon better than most of their competition and they push quality products.

Re:And?

[gorzek]

The same thing happens with banks, for that matter, or any instance where you're charged for something. What are the odds you'll be accidentally credited instead of, say, debited twice for the same thing? And if multiple erroneous debits wind up overdrawing your account, how good are the odds that the offending party will reimburse the overdraft charges?

These errors always seem to be at the expense of the consumer and it's a struggle just to get back to zero, much less be compensated for your time and trouble.

Re:And?

[mea37]

You say it would be nice to think it's incompetent, but it sure sounds like you'd rather think they're out to get you.

I have no problem at all believing that a billing system, which has many dynamic provisions for adding charges but probably only one or two pretty simple methods for adding credits, would tend to error in the company's favor.

An error in the company's favor is defintiely more likely to be noticed. If I don't use data but I see a 1MB data charge on my bill, I know something's screwed up. If I use data but the reported usage on my bill is 1MB lower than it should be, will I even know? Even if I've been keeping track and I think I know what you'll bill, I might just assume I was wrong about how you round usage.

And I bet if you think about it you'll have to agree that an error, once noticed, is more likely to be reported if it's in the customer's interest to report it.

But sure, in spite of all that, let's look at the fact that the stories never talk about a rash of under-charges as proof of a conspiracy.

Re:And?

[bberens]

There's a company down the street that does billing for (I think) Sprint. Some of their developers have interviewed here. Apparently it's a pretty rough shop to work in. I dunno if it's bad legacy code or not but they have constant problems and they're always getting after hours calls. It's a big deal if a billing cycle has problems. Part of the problem is that the bills are so unnecessarily complicated. And lots of stuff *does* get flagged before it goes out. That's what happens when the company creates so many different kinds of fees and credits it could make your head spin. Anyways, at least from this end (developer) it doesn't appear to be a big corporate conspiracy to overcharge you.

Re:And?

[Penguinisto]

A systematic error in their billing system - the kind of thing I have no problem believing would slip past a corporate QA department - could easily rack up $90M across the book of business before being noticed.

So why would it take an FCC inquiry (and a large number of consumer complaints, endless websites/news stories about Verizon's bad data-charging habits, "Verizon Math", and even firing employees who offer service blocks to customers)?

In most cases, okay, I can totally grok the 'never attribute to malice' line. But Verizon? Sorry... they're the type where this sort of thing is designed, not accidental. Also, that $90m is likely only a portion of the money they've taken in over the years.

Re:And?

[OhHellWithIt]

It may be that only my Palm phone does this, and that others do not, but every time I use the Internet from my phone, it asks me if I really want to do that. If there is a crime, however, it's some form of monopoly: Verizon now requires that anyone buying a "smart" phone such as a Palm Centro, Blackberry, or Droid commit to several years of their $30/mo. data services. This is on top of requiring a voice plan that costs $40/mo., so the minimum entry price is $70/mo. All the carriers seem to do the same thing.

I don't believe the argument that the high price is necessary to subsidize the cost of the phone because 1) Verizon was willing to sell the Centro with the pay-as-you-go data plan until 2009 and 2) before Palm quit making standalone PDAs, they could be had for less than $150.

Re:And?

[commodore64_love]

The European Union is no better than the American union of states.
They just trade one kind of oppression (corporate) for another kind of oppression (bureaucrat).

Re:And?

[Swanktastic]

It's interesting that your Motel 6 story is about a local franchisee screwing you over, and the national office (the Megacorps!!!) solving the problem for you.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can answer the latter question. My bank incorrectly entered a debit to my account while I was on vacation. This caused several of my automatic bill pays not to fire and I came home to quite the money mess. They credited back the error, the overdraft fees, all of the late fees from the missed payments, and paid me for the trouble.

I _love_ my bank, First Horizon.

(This is not an astroturf.)

Re:And?

[ncy]

as a customer of Verizon, i can say that i've received third-party charges multiple times on things i never used or even heard of, in the amount of i believe between $30-$50. good thing looked at the bill in detail. and what's more annoying is that Verizon support said they can't do anything about it in terms of refunding; had to call the third-party company listed on the bill, who only after getting threatened to be reported said "i'll talk to my supervisor" and refunded the full amount, sometimes with extreme rudeness. i imagine they must be getting a lot of these calls. shady business practice if you ask me. the last time this happened, it was some music service, and the Verizon guy said it might be the "kids" using some wireless service, which is stupid because we don't use have Verizon wireless, only landline and cable. at least they offered to put a "block" on third-party charges this time ... we'll see how that goes

Re:And?

[ScrewMaster]

It's also hardly limited to Verizon. I've been with Sprint for several years and had a few occasions where they put strange charges on my bill. Of course, I called and complained and they took them off, saying they were "billing errors." I don't know what I'd prefer, that they're so shady they're purposely tacking bullshit charges onto people's bills, or they are so incompetent they don't know how to keep such mistakes from happening.

I can only guess how many people get those charges who never bat an eye and just pay them.

Yes, I had much the same experience with Sprint. It's why I went to T-Mobile: believe me, I asked around and tried to get an idea of if I would experience the same problems. Everyone I spoke to at the time was very positive about T-Mobile's billing practices.

With Sprint, I would get charged .25c per text message even though my account had unlimited texting. Then the bastards would spam me, and charge me for the privilege (the same .25c per message.) Then, on top of that, I would get Internet charges on an account that didn't have a data plan, and twenty or thirty bucks a month would show up for watching TV shows on a phone that didn't support video playback. As you said, when I called they would immediately take them off, but that's just ridiculous. Comcast would pull similar crap. I eventually had enough of both of them.

At the moment, I have U-Verse for my Internet and phone service (dropped the TV because, well, we really don't watch it enough to justify the expense, although the service was excellent) and T-Mobile for my cell phone (with data plan.) Both have given me great service for the money, and not a single billing error. Not one. So it's certainly possible to run an honest billing system and some companies do. Well, you have to figure AT&T has plenty of experience with that, and as far as T-Mobile ... well, they're just Deutsche Telekom's US division. I'm not at all surprised that the Germans know how to do proper accounting.

Matter of fact, the only time I've had to call AT&T U-Verse support was when we started getting all kinds of noise and dropouts on the incoming VDSL signal. Turned out it wasn't AT&T's fault ... it was coming in on the power line. The only time I've called T-Mobile's customer service was when I upgraded my plan.

Now, just to be fair, Sprint's cell service never gave me any cause for complaint: it was their stupidass billing that lost me as a customer. Comcast, on the other hand, ran all the usual "traffic management" interference on me, dropped my second IP address but continued to charge me for it, refused to accept that it wasn't working even though their own technician said it wasn't, had a ridiculously slow backchannel (16 mbit/sec down, about 34k up) and generally just irritated the fuck out of me. Then one day this young Japanese individual knocked on my door, politely asking if I was interested in AT&T's U-Verse service. I practically yanked the guy into the house, signed up on the spot.

Sprint and Comcast both keep sending me junk mail with the usual "we want you back!" crap. No thanks, you had your chance.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Re:And?

[ScrewMaster]

The same thing happens with banks, for that matter, or any instance where you're charged for something. What are the odds you'll be accidentally credited instead of, say, debited twice for the same thing? And if multiple erroneous debits wind up overdrawing your account, how good are the odds that the offending party will reimburse the overdraft charges?

These errors always seem to be at the expense of the consumer and it's a struggle just to get back to zero, much less be compensated for your time and trouble.

Yeah, you're right about that (and it's statistically improbable at best.)

Still, I did have one positive experience along those lines once. Gotta be about twenty five years ago, but at the time I was pretty broke and was waiting for some money to come in, so I could open another checking account and get away from a bank that had seriously screwed me over (in fact, that's why I was pretty broke.) Suddenly, a substantial amount of money appeared in my account: obviously a banking error, but I immediately withdrew some of it, used it to open an account at another bank, then immediately withdrew those funds and put them back in my original account. A couple of days later, the original bank fixed its mistake, but that was all the time I needed.

But you're right, that's pretty goddamn rare.

Re:And?

[Bobfrankly1]

I've yet to meet an executive so far gone that he believes you can overcharge your customers and then repay the principal when you get caught. They like to be a lot more subtle than that.

Besides, the executives plan on not getting caught to begin with.

Re:And?

[commodore64_love]

Read more carefully. The national corporation *didn't* solve the problem for me. Yes they ordered the manager to honor the 10% off reservation (which is good), however the manager then invented a lie about me having sex with the deskgirl and threw me out. When I contacted the national corporation they backed the manager's decision despite it being a lie, so YES this is a story of screwage by a megacorp.

Re:And?

[Dewin]

And if multiple erroneous debits wind up overdrawing your account, how good are the odds that the offending party will reimburse the overdraft charges?

I've had an ATM time-out in the middle of a transaction -- it pulled the money from my account but didn't give it to me. The second attempt ended up overdrawing the account.

While it took about a week to get sorted out, I only had to actually talk to the bank once. The refund even refunded the ATM fee for the failed transaction.

Granted, my bank at the time (not the bank associated with the ATM) was Washington Mutual, and this was back before they sucked (which was before Chase bought them))

(On the flipside, Verizon owes me about $100 in WA sales tax that they charged me after I moved to OR and changed my address with them, and they still refuse to refund it.)

Re:And?

[gorzek]

I'm not talking about banks. I noticed the people who pointed out overdraft situations had the bank reimburse them. I'm talking about some third party overdrawing your account and then making up for the overdrafts as a courtesy to you, for their mistake.

It usually seems to be the financial institutions that make it right rather than the offending transactor.

Re:And?

[rjstanford]

Why should WalMart take the financial hit by accepting a viewed DVD for return (which they can't resell at the same price) because you didn't like it?

Re:And?

[Dewin]

Third parties aren't likely to do this because having the bank reversing the overdraft fee due to an error is 'free' from the third party's perspective. In some situations, however, the bank will tell you to get the transaction reversed by the third party and then they'll reverse the overdraft fee.

The other gotcha here is if the third party's mistake caused not one but multiple overdraft fees on your account (due to subsequent transactions before you realized you were overdrawn, since you wouldn't have been if they didn't get it wrong.). It's possible for the overdraft fees to be more than the original transaction in this case -- if they accidentally hit "600.00" instead of "60.00" and you also went and got gas, bought a coffee at the convenience store while the gas was pumping, grabbed lunch at work and bought milk on the way home -- that's 5 overdraft fees right there. A quick Google search suggests that the median overdraft fee is 27 dollars, so you just wracked up more in overdraft fees than the business took in receipts.

Re:And?

[gorzek]

Yup, that's exactly the kind of situation I'm talking about. I once had a landlord I gave a rent check to, and they "accidentally" processed it twice. I confirmed it was the landlord's bank that did it. Overdrew my account substantially, and of course I piled other charges on top of it because I had no idea I was in the red. My credit union was really nice about it, though, realized what happened, and reversed the duplicate charge--as well as all the overdrafts. But by rights the landlord's bank should've had to pay for that mistake.

Re:And?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Why should WalMart take the financial hit

They don't. Stores send all their customer returns to the original supplier and get money back. It's called a chargeback. The person taking the hit would be Sony or WB or whoever originally produced the crap movie.

Re:And?

[2obvious4u]

Also, as someone who has worked on the technical side of the a large telco's billing department; I can guarantee that it was in fact a mistake and not malice. Our billing system constantly had errors. We weren't as large as Verizon, but we did have to issue refunds of maybe $100,000 every couple of months. It was usually do to some regulation and taxes being improperly applied. Telco billing changes so much so often it is hard to build a billing system that can change to any and all ways the government decides to regulate and tax it. Also if you add a new switch to your network it can log and parse billing files differently causing an error similar to what is being described by Verizon.

So as someone who as actually worked on Telco billing systems, I'm on the "it was an accident" side.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

very true kudos

Re:And?

[muridae]

The refund customers are getting is between 2 and 6 USD. The charge, per month that this occurs in, is 1.9 USD per Mb (anyone with a verizon plan want to confirm whether it's megabit vs byte? I don't deal with their data system). Sure, looks like a great refund, if this only happens to you once or twice or even three times. Anyone who has had to deal with this problem more, and it's not a real refund any longer.

And the problem is not people who are using the internet on their phones, and then just lying about it. Verizon makes at least one of the default shortcut keys an internet or 'my vzw music store' by default. The shortcut keys do not have a label as shortcuts, and the booklet with the phone just mentions that they are programmable shortcut keys, not where they go by default. To further their scheme, the default option on most menus is 'get on the internet to do something'. An mp3 player with phone defaults to 'connect with vcast' instead of 'play the music on the sd card', and the ringtone menu defaults to 'buy new ringtones' ahead of showing you the ones already on the phone. They have even told employees that call centers need to upsell customers instead of disabling sms or internet access on a per number basis, firing them if they do offer to disable the options first. Google Verizon upsell or look back on /., it was covered here as well.

So the answer that everyone is happy with is two to six bucks off their next VZW bill? Six dollars amortized over the rest of your contract is nothing at all. It isn't even a refund, the money is not coming out of verizon's pocket at any point. It comes out of incoming revenue, so the only people who will notice will be shareholders. Not to mention that 90 million is the max they might be refunding. They say 'about 15 million people' and 'between 2 and 6 dollars' which they will probably try to keep as close to 2 as they can. But "Verizon issues more than $30 million in rebates" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Re:And?

[sjames]

So why is it then that the complexity so greatly favors invalid charges rather than creating an equal liklihood of credits or charges?

In fact, over time since customers are far more likely to report an erroneous charge than a credit, the system should come to vastly favor credits.

Perhaps the developers only get bug reports for erroneous credits?

Re:And?

[erroneus]

The large number makes a systemic error far more noticeable and correctable. The fact that they ignored complaints and failed to issue corrections without being prompted to do so through government inquiry says all anyone needs to know.

And if, in the event, that errors are made in the customer's favor (which almost never happens) they waste no time going back to correct it.

My company is currently in the process of disputing several thousand dollars in unexplainable charges. We are simply unable to reach anyone that can explain it and yet they hold that we still owe it. This is a business account. They also do this to private customers. They do this for wireless, FiOS, T1, DS3, and on up. They operate the same everywhere. This level of consistency can not ever be an accident. It has to be intelligent design. (There! I said it!)

In criminal cases, evidence needs to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This doesn't yet qualify Verizon executives for criminal charges. For that we need signed letters, testimony, emails and memos that give orders and instructions for this fraud.

In civil cases, a preponderance of evidence is needed. I think we have that in unending amounts.

Re:And?

[icebike]

Exactly.

This has been going on for years. Why wasn't the problem rectified long before they raked in a several hundred million.

Anybody who believes this is only a 90 million dollar issue is delusional. Do some web research.

David Pogue made a compelling case a year ago that Verizon could rake in as much as 300 million per month due to mistake keystrokes.

But Verizon is not alone.

AT&T is now loading their Android phones with sneaky-pay services that never clearly state you will see additional charges. AT&T Navigator can't hold a candle to Google Maps, but they want 9 bucks a month for it, and the words free trial pop up, but the price is never mentioned, and you can't delete the app.

Re:And?

[icebike]

These charges were systemic, not accidental.

Read David Pogue's article on how this happens:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/verizon-how-much-do-you-charge-now/

Re:And?

[apoc.famine]

I think the real reason may be able to be explained by a probability distribution, rather than a conspiracy. Phone companies have very, very few ways to credit your account. Definitely no automated credits. They have many, many automated ways to charge your account. Interest, late payment fees, over the limit for minutes/data/texts, out-of-network calling, roaming charges, etc.

Throw all the charges into a bucket with all the credits, and you're already very heavily weighted to charges when picking randomly. Take out everything that's not automated, and you're left with just about all charges. Not to say that they aren't sleazy as hell, but I think automated errors heavily favor charges due to the shear number of them.

Re:And?

[tyrione]

Agreed. Like clockwork Verizon has gotten a phone call that ultimately sees them removing erroneous charges on my account for the past 7 years. I refuse the digital statement and it's quite easy to spot these charges when one always opens their physical mail. Now that the iPhone 4 systems are out and tested [what I've been waiting on] I am moving over to iOS devices for personal use. I've been using the same phone since I first opened the Verizon account. I'm sure they just love me.

Re:And?

[FlyHelicopters]

$90 million is a drop in the bucket to Verizon...
It may be a lot of money to you, and no "accident" to you, but to them, it is a rounding error, so it probably really is a mistake.

Re:And?

[sjames]

But I note that they are far far more likely to APPLY one of those charges when they shouldn't than they are to FAIL to apply one when they can (effectively a credit).

The argument is the same, they are far more likely to hear about applying charges when they shouldn't, yet are far better at eliminating the failure to apply a charge when they can. The latter, being largely unreported should come to dominate unless they deliberately skew the results.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

> _What, the fact that it's a large number makes the idea of an error impossible?_

The fact that I complained to the FCC about this earlier this year and Verizon vehemently denied they were charging me erroneously. My phone would wake up once per week at 2:00 am and download some shitty update for their crap and I'd get stuck with it on my bill. Verizon was very adamant that I must have a child sneaking the phone onto the Internet while I was asleep (they seriously suggested this). The fact that they'd been getting complaints for years and they refused to do anything about it until the FCC pressured them to do so.

Re:And?

[rjstanford]

That's a good one.

You think that Sony will process a refund for a used movie? Even with WalMart's well known terms, that's a joke.

Also, WalMart has paid their CC gateway fees (twice now, once to process the sale, once to process the refund), stocked/stored/shipped the movie, paid the cashier who sold it to you, paid the clerk who processed the return... when your margins are wafer thin (sometimes down to a fraction of a percentage point), those actions are far from insignificant.

Anyway, my point still stands. You bought something. While you got exactly what was offered, you didn't like it. In all fairness, why isn't this your problem?

"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[skyride]

If you RTFA, it actually says the overages were caused by "built in applications" such as web features on the phone put there by verizon, and then charged $1.99 for 1MB of data used despite it being merely a few kilobytes downloaded.

Also, the majority of customers will be receiving Credits instead of an actual refund. So essentially they will never get this money back.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Pharmboy]

I did RTFA, Verizon said:

"We will mail former customers refund checks. In most cases, these credits are in the $2 to $6 range; some will receive larger credits or refunds." which means actual refunds for larger amounts, and for the $2-$6 range (most customers) it will be a credit on their next bill. Looks like they are trying to do the right thing. For once.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[chemicaldave]

Looks like they are trying to do the right thing. For once.

Right...after the FCC told them to do something about it. This is totally conjecture, but I doubt Verizon would have been so willing to issue refunds without pressure.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[skyride]

You read it wrong:

"In most cases, these credits are in the $2 to $6 range; some will receive larger credits or refunds."

So no, there will be a lot of people owed more than $6 dollars and receiving credits. Regardless, in the vast majority of cases, its still $2 they should never have been charged.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Anonymous Coward]

But but but the FCC is a government agency! They can't possibly do anything right! The free market should have sorted everything out!

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Kilrah_il]

So on the blue corner we have Verizon, a mega-corp. out to make a buck. By definition, everything they do is evil. On the red corner we have the FCC, a government agency and as such incompetent and wrong-doing by default.
Looks like we have a tie.

I mean people, we have a company that charged incorrectly (I'll even admit, based on what is written on this thread - indecently). People complained, the FCC checked on this and Verizon responded by refunding people. I'd say that for once the system worked - someone X did bad, someone else (Y) corrected him and then X did the right thing and gave the money back. I say cheers!

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Cwix]

Dont worry its just pretend time now... Just pretend that either the FCC wasn't involved, or that it was the FCCs idea to do it in the first place.
Then accuse the FCC of persecuting small businesses.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[nicolas.kassis]

Since when is the wireless world a free market?

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[TheLink]

Maybe we should give them both a cookie and say "Good boy!", and hope they continue behaving like this.

Hey it works for dogs :).

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[ZedNaught]

Verizon never does the right thing. While they are refunding the money for the accidental data usage, they are also imposing a mandatory $9.99 minimum data plan on every wireless customer with a browser capability on their cell phone to prevent this from being a problem in the future. So they give back $90 million and collect $9.99 per line going forward.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[alen]

they charged correctly. before the iphone and the app store Verizon had it's Get it Now where you can watch TV via your cell phone via 3G as well as buy games from an app store. the button to launch it was very easy to press and resulted in a dollar or so of data charges a month for people who never subscribed for $15 a month.

happened to my wife who had VZW phones until her iPhone 3G

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[kidgenius]

Actually, I had to call up to dispute a data charge on my wife's phone. Despite actually going onto the web site earlier this year and completely BLOCKING all data/web access to the phone, last month there was a data charge. The VZ tech tried to argue with me saying that even if I didn't have a plan, data could still be charged. I then told her I set up a BLOCK on all data. Looking deeper into my account, she saw the block that had been put in place, and she was completely flummoxed how I would get charged a $1.99 data fee, despite the phone being INCAPABLE of sending/receiving data.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[ColdWetDog]

Maybe we should give them both a cookie and say "Good boy!", and hope they continue behaving like this.

How about we put a shock collar on both of them? One that goes to 11.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[zeropointburn]

It seemed like everything they did after taking over Alltel was designed to drive people away. They gave us a few months on the original much more generous plans before booting everyone to overpriced Verizon plans. Viaero has been awesome since I switched, with the same or better plans and coverage as Alltel. It was much much cheaper with Viaero to get unlimited access for both lines compared to any other carrier.

  I'm not a shill (and not AC), just a satisfied customer. I'm sure they are probably just as greedy as any other telco, but so far they have treated me very well.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[C0L0PH0N]

This is absolutely correct. Verizon has a very small number of phones, called Feature Phones. You can find the models on their website, here. If you purchase a Feature Phone (and that is all I purchase, as I don't want the data capability), then they won't charge you the extra 19.99/month for the data plan. If you purchase any non-Feature Phone, as most of them are, then you will automatically be charged 19.99/month. You cannot get out of it. So if you are not into texting or browsing the web on your phone, and just want to use it for voice mail and calls, as I do, then you MUST get a Feature Phone. Further, unless you ask, the Verizon policy requires their representatives to sell you a non-Feature Phone set. They are forbidden to advise you, "unless asked", about the existence of Feature Phones. This is Verizon veering very close to being evil, certainly completely interested in their customer's money and not at all in their customer's best interests.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the phone has to connect to the internet to find out the data is blocked, so you get charged $1.99. Beautiful system. At least one of the four phones on my plan has at least a $1.99 charge every month, although none of us has ever connected to the internet. Push the wrong button, launch the browser for five seconds, and it's billed. I never disputed any of them because I don't have the hour to spend on the phone arguing with them.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[natehoy]

"Correctly", yes, but the "accident" isn't really an accident when the phone is set up in such a way as to almost force you to make the mistake frequently.

I've had this same issue with AT&T. My father-in-law chose a phone that has a hard-coded shortcut button in an easy place to accidentally push it, and the button sends you to something requiring data and the button cannot be remapped or disabled (without the careful application of tools, of course, but most people don't want to have to microsolder a button out of their brand-new phone!). We looked around for another "dumb" phone without this button, and they basically don't exist in the AT&T store.

Their obvious hope was that, after a few calls to have the data charge reversed, you'd just accept the $1 or $2 a month of accidental charges because it's more hassle to call them every month and get it reversed. The phone has no way to disable data usage internally (AT&T disabled that option in the setup menu), the button cannot be remapped or disabled (AT&T disabled that option in the setup menu as well), and AT&T doesn't exactly go out of their way to let you know you can block data (or SMS) on your account to prevent accidental usage.

Even if you did elect to block data, what if you wanted to be able to access data occasionally? My father-in-law was quite happy to pay $1 or so when he really did want to check weather or traffic on his phone, but ended up blocking data because he was tapping the AT&T "Shop Ringtones" button almost every time he opened his phone (it was located precisely in the logical spot to grip the phone to flip it open, so, yes, he was "holding it wrong"), and was paying an average of several dollars a month in charges until I told him about data blocking. He's not terribly happy, and AT&T is actually making less money off him than they could, but that was the best solution we could find at the time.

So it basically means that, if you don't intend to use data (even on a "dumb" phone), you have to specifically ask to have data blocked on every handset purchase (which means you need to know the service is available), and when you change handsets you have to ask all over again. It's not hard to do, but it's not something you should have to ask for yourself.

Unlocked phones have the major advantage of not having carrier premapped buttons. Just one of the reasons why I think they are worth the extra money. :)

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it had a choice for the consumer, unlike cable.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[ScrewMaster]

Verizon never does the right thing.

Right is relative. I doubt you'll hear their stockholders complaining.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[commodore64_love]

>>>But but but the FCC is a government agency! They can't possibly do anything right!

The Government does *sometimes* do the right thing. Such as when they filed a lawsuit against Toyota and ordered them to replace customers' engines which had died before reaching 100,000 miles (Toyota refused to honor the 100K warranty). But then the government does wrong things too: Like sending 1 billion dollars of the "U.S. Stimulus" Bill to Africa. And Brazil. And also some to India. Not sure how sending money to foreigners is supposed to help american citizens?

The problem is that the number of times government does something right is outnumbered 10,000-to-1 by the number of times they do something wrong.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Myopic]

Doing the right thing? Hey, it's a sliding scale, but the minimum would be to include nominal interest along with the refund. Are they doing that? If not I'd personally be wary of calling it "right". Also, a sincerely worded letter bearing the CEO's signature would be part of the minimum.

Changing the entire way they do business would be better than minimum, and easier to call "right". But, hey, it's a sliding scale.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[tsj5j]

I'm really curious about how the US legal system works.

When a user shares a song, they pay statutory damages hundreds or thousands of times of the song's original value.
When a corporation rips off the public (by accident or on purpose), they get to just refund what they took without any "encouragement" to make sure it doesn't recur.

Is that right, or am I missing something?

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Myopic]

Very close to evil? Sheesh, you are a lot more forgiving than I am. I think it's evil to fail to provide straight-up easy plain non-bundled prices for each individual product in your line. It's hard to find any companies which offer that, and impossible for communications companies. But, eh, I'm sort of a hater that way.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[commodore64_love]

My VirginMobile phone has the same flaw. Once you access the datanet (for example download a ringtone), you will be charged a dollar a day even if you never use the net again.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Kilrah_il]

In order to get statuary damages, you need to go through some kind of legal process - be it a law suit or just a fine by the regulatory body (i.e. FCC). By admitting their wrongdoing promptly and offering instant refund, they managed to prevent this process.
A user can still file a law suit claiming statuary damages, but most (all) wouldn't bother.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[commodore64_love]

+1 accurate. When the US DOJ sued the record companies in 2000, the companies avoided the heavy fine if they lost a lawsuit by simply offering to refund ~$20 to each and every purchaser of a CD. The DOJ agreed.

The same thing happened a few years later with Paypal. And now with Verizon.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[sjames]

It's no accident it's so incredibly easy to do something that incurs an extra charge but practically impossible to do any number of things that don't.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[apoc.famine]

You've got it.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[tompaulco]

Any cell carrier will argue until they are blue in the face that it is impossible to block data, unwanted text charges, etc., until you mention the correct set of words. The correct set varies by company. Once the block is in place, everything works great until you do something to trigger removing the block, such as changing your phone, modifying your calling plan, or any of a number of other unrelated ( to a reasonable thinking human being) actions. Then, you are back on the list for text spammers to start charging you hundreds of dollars a month in unwanted and unauthorized and in many cases undelivered purchases.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[BoberFett]

Really? So I can just put up some towers and start signing up subscribers?

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[Spykk]

If the only repercussions to Verizon are refunding the money they should not have taken, then what will deter them from doing this in the future? Without some kind of risk being involved it is in the best interests of the telecoms to stuff in as many bogus charges as they can.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[boom1shot]

The legal system. ...works?

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[ZedNaught]

Right is relative. I doubt you'll hear their stockholders complaining.

10/04/2000 44.31
10/04/2010 33.03

Their price gouging isn't doing much for their stock price.

Re:"Accidents" and "Refunds"

[ScrewMaster]

Right is relative. I doubt you'll hear their stockholders complaining.

10/04/2000 44.31 10/04/2010 33.03

Their price gouging isn't doing much for their stock price.

Good.

Anonymous coward

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the major reason that my wife and I left verizon. Too late verizon. We are not coming back, ever

Re:Anonymous coward

[TheKidWho]

It's tomorrow already?

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even have a Verizon account but I feel entitled to money by proxy for the suffering they have imposed that has filtered into the shared unconscious of humanity.

That's why...

[Anonymous Coward]

You either get the truly unlimited plan, or the phone that doesn't even speak internet.

Re:That's why...

[gorzek]

Or give the slightest bit of thought to what you're doing before you just click something. I have Sprint and while they aren't the greatest mobile phone company, they spell out quite plainly if that button you're about to push is going to cost you a couple bucks. I don't know how up-front Verizon was about these charges but I have a feeling many people just weren't paying attention.

Re:That's why...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Sprint and while they aren't the greatest mobile phone company, they spell out quite plainly if that button you're about to push is going to cost you a couple bucks. I don't know how up-front Verizon was about these charges but I have a feeling many people just weren't paying attention.

Currently, Verizon charges you $1.99 to display the message that the button you've just pushed is going to cost you $1.99 per MB. It's truly absurd.

Seriously ... who naturally thinks that the keyboard button with the downward arrow is going to cost you $1.99 if you press it while on the phone's home screen (but nowhere else) and that (on some Verizon phones) there is no way to re-map that arrow key to an innocuous function when you're on the phone's home screen?

Re:That's why...

[gorzek]

I certainly wouldn't assume I'd be charged for pushing a button on the phone itself, rather than clicking something on a particular webpage. Kudos to Verizon, I guess, for finding such a "great" way to scam people.

At this point I'm thinking we need some kind of functionality on ALL phones that, if an action is going to incur charges, you be prompted with some kind of confirmation box. "Silent" charges are evil.

"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[Sockatume]

They had designed their phones such that there was a shortcut button to their web portal. Users without a data plan, taken to that portal, were charged for the data at the usual ridiculous out-of-plan rates. They could have the portal blocked but this just meant they were charged for the data used in retrieving the "this portal is blocked" page instead. So there's an interesting bit of background detail going on here. Maybe $2 per customer isn't much to the customer, but it's a tidy bit of extra revenue to Verizon.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. There's a reason I'm none too happy about their attempts to get away from even the limited "unlimited" data usage plans. What they did was about par for the course for Verizon (or any of the other major carriers for that matter...) and the only reason they're doing the refunds this fast is that they don't want any more meddling from the FCC or any other Government agency than they absolutely have to. Doing this gets them off their backs with only a small loss of revenue and potentially stayed a move to force them going to sane tiered rates, etc.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[AmberBlackCat]

I think Sprint is worse. Because whenever I would play an MP3 from the memory card in the phone, we got charged for data. I think their music player connects to the internet for some reason. My phone had a habit of launching the music player without my knowledge sometimes, perhaps due to a button placed on the outside of the phone. One day it played the same song all day and we were charged for several hours of internet use. This is regardless of the internet connection being explicitly turned off in the settings. If I tried to use the web browser, it would say the internet connection was off and ask if I wanted to turn it on. If I played an mp3, it would say nothing and just start charging for data.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[Charliemopps]

I have a verizon phone and have this problem as well. There's not just the portal, there's a dozen other "apps" that make use of the dataplan and they have them all hotkeyed to the front of the phone. Not only can you open them by mistake, you can also set them off just by having it in your pocket. To me it was clearly intentional on verizons part. I called them and told them I not only didn't want a data plan, I also wanted them to shut off text and data to my phone entirely, so it couldn't be used. You can still hit those buttons and the apps still come up, but now I don't get charged.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[gorzek]

That sounds more like a defective phone/application than something Sprint was specifically doing wrong. I've had multiple Sprint phones over the years and never had a music player that used Internet access when accessing local data. I hope you complained to Sprint about it. They've always been pretty good about crediting me when there's a billing screwup.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

what kind of phone did you have?

it's pretty common these days for software to go out to get the CDDB information for any tracks that don't contain the full ID3 tags. though I've only seen one or two phone media players that do it without asking you?

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[xaxa]

I used to hit the "Internet" button on an old pay-as-you-go phone accidentally, and I'd be charged for viewing the home page.

Fortunately, the charge was £0.20/MB, charged in 1kB increments, so the minimum charge for a data session was 1p. Also, being charged pennies made me far more likely to actually use the service, since I could read the news and check my email for less than 20p. That's 20p more than they'd make from me if the minimum charge had been £1.50.

How can $2 possibly be reasonable?

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[drinkypoo]

As far as I can tell, all carriers do this. My last tracfone and my new one have the same problem, although it's harder to accidentally hit the button on my new LG phone than on the old Motorola. It's also harder to open the phone, though, so I'm not sure it's a win.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[ScrewMaster]

They had designed their phones such that there was a shortcut button to their web portal. Users without a data plan, taken to that portal, were charged for the data at the usual ridiculous out-of-plan rates. They could have the portal blocked but this just meant they were charged for the data used in retrieving the "this portal is blocked" page instead. So there's an interesting bit of background detail going on here. Maybe $2 per customer isn't much to the customer, but it's a tidy bit of extra revenue to Verizon.

Sprint did something kinda similar to me (note that I've not been with Sprint for some time.) I had a semi-smart phone that had a built-in Web browser. It was pretty limited, and I didn't bother to buy a data plan for the thing. In any event, it turned out that every time I went to check my minutes, I was being charged about two bucks per kilobyte. My first bill had a couple hundred dollars of "data charges" on it, with no explanation of what they were for. So I called up and complained, and at first I met with some resistance until I finally got hold of a supervisor (who was from New Jersey, not Bangladesh) who explained what was going on and agreed to write off the charges.

Left a bad taste in my mouth on that one. Then I went through about a year and a half of monthly calls to Sprint to get weirdass charges removed. Finally went to T-Mobile and haven't looked back.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[zakkie]

Maybe you had a file with a link to an mp3 in it, like an M3U file...

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[Twanfox]

I had this problem with their VZ Navigator program. Somehow, and I'll be hard pressed to figure out how, my phone got jostled and bumped just the right ways to download that app on its own. I only noticed it when my bill came up and there was a nice extra $10 charge. I did get my money back, and deleted the app from the phone immediately, but it sure would have been nice to customize the home screen and delete the stuff I'll never use. Only solution was to have VZ block that app's download on their side.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[jackbird]

Yep, my Sprint LG Remarq does this, at something like $0.03/KB. Well, it did, until their online chat rep happily blocked my internet access and refunded 2 months of charges immediately.

Re:"Mistaken charges" is a bit euphemistic

[AmberBlackCat]

The current one is an LG Lotus. The previous one that did this was another LG phone but I don't remember the name.

Erroneous billing error?

[91degrees]

As opposed to the usual error free billing errors?

Re:Erroneous billing error?

[Chris Mattern]

These were erroneous billing errors that were made, um, in error.

Re:Erroneous billing error?

[ScrewMaster]

Is that like being mistaken about a mistake?

Yes indeed it is, and eventually Verizon will want their customers to return that 90 million in mistakenly issued refunds.

Re:Erroneous billing error?

[Myopic]

Whoops! The error was getting caught. Actually, they always get caught; the error was getting caught badly enough for Big Government to come in and save the day.

Re:Erroneous billing error?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck is anyone calling this a billing error? It and related shortcut keys (my vodafone phone has one too) are a scam. Plain and simple micro payment scam.

The only amazing 'news' here is that the FCC actually did something about it.

Cost of billing?

[vlm]

These customers would normally have been billed at the standard rate of $1.99 per megabyte for any data they chose to access from their phones.

Meant to say, "... standard obscene rate of ..." Thats oligopoly cartel price gouging at its finest.

I work in the telecom industry (not mobile phones). Over my career all the costs of landline long distance service have collapsed except for the cost of billing. Thus most of the "whatever cents per minute" cost is the cost of detailed billing, auditing, handling complaints. Finally the industry moved to "all you can eat" billing and everyone benefits.

I have no interest at all in owning a "smart phone" or whatever until per meg billing is abolished. I'm guessing out of the $2/meg they blow about $1 on customer support / complaints / legal / billing clerks time / software costs in support of the billing process itself and stash about $1 in pure profit.

If I'm going to pay money to get screwed, the scenario is not going to revolve around cell phone billing. F that whole industry and the shills and crooks that run it.

Re:Cost of billing?

[inode_buddha]

Reason why I'm strongly considering switching *from* Verizon: I only make about 1/2 dozen long-distance calls per year, landline only -- I don't have a cell phone. I'm paying about $75 per month even if I make *zero* calls incoming or outgoing. That's like a grand per year. There is no way in hell that it costs them that much to maintain the line, nor to operate their biz. I'm looking at a "dumb" cell phone which has no features other than being just a phone. No contract nor termination fees - the phone is owned outright. Flat rate per month with no roaming nor long-distance charges. X$ per month buys you X minutes, and that's it.

Re:Cost of billing?

[ceoyoyo]

Per meg billing is great. It just hast to be at a reasonable rate. Half a cent per meg is reasonable, at the moment. You pay for what you get.

Metering a connection doesn't cost anything at all. You're probably right about the rest of it, but that doesn't change with unmetered billing anyway. And unmetered services encourage companies to oversubscribe their systems and hope nobody actually uses what they've been sold.

Re:Cost of billing?

[vlm]

Metering a connection doesn't cost anything at all.

Well, that would truly be a miracle. It costs a heck of a lot more to bill on a meter rather than flat per month.

You can't seriously claim there will never be a cost in capital or labor when connecting operational gear with the financial servers? Never an opportunity cost or labor cost when scheduling maintenance? Whats that, we'll make it all quadruple redundant? No problem open the wallet wide... Never a customer support call to complain about overcharges? Now that operational logs are "valuable" they won't have to be stored more carefully? Never be an outage of the logging system that "costs the telco millions, in aggregate"? Never a cost of "fraud" where someone steals service, no matter how cheap? Never a cost of anti-fraud measures? Never a cost of internal employee monitoring to make sure they do not "correct" their own bills, and then the costs of firing and replacing them? Never a cost of auditing to prove its all honest, or alternatively the cost of dishonest auditing to cover it all up? No cost of all the personnel training / education / R+D for all levels from the router jockeys to the customer service team and all the way up the management chain? What about the cost of storing all metered data for months or maybe years to handle billing corrections?

In comparison, billing by month has the unexpected cost of ... ... um ... Ah yes, prorated service upon cancellation. Of course you could "get rid" of prorated service contractually, a couple different ways, ranging from being nicely generous to being total stingy bastards. Hmm, gullibility test, I wonder if mobile phone operators would be generous or stingy... Anyway, that leaves us with the cost of monthly billing being ... uh .. yea thats it, exactly nothing. Going to be hard to either match or lower that cost with metered.

Re:Cost of billing?

[vlm]

Flat rate per month with no roaming nor long-distance charges.

Your jitterbug is OK. The marketing, last time I was unable to DVR FF past it, was aimed at the gray/white haired crowd. If you could hold your nose and buy it despite its marketing, you could probably hold your nose and buy a virginmobile phone, which has different, yet equally offensive marketing. And it is something like a quarter per minute prepay, unused balance zeros after a couple months. Which is psuedo-flat rate at ultra low usage, but in practice runs single digit dollars per month. You may save money on a $X buys you X minutes plan, even with expiration.

The confuse-opoly of it is so annoying. If only there was a way around the (un)free market.

Re:Cost of billing?

[iammani]

If I may say so, thats (jitterbug) a complete rip off, you will much better of with a pay as you go t-mobile prepaid plan. Its $100 buys $1000 minutes thats valid for 1 year. You can top-up when you want to and be billed exactly for the minutes you have used.

Re:Cost of billing?

[inode_buddha]

Actually, I *am* in the grey-haired crowd. So, I have no problems with that. When I get a phone, I want just that - nothing more. And, no fine print with hidden "fees". My current (landline) phone is a 1975 Bell model 500 desktop - remember when they had an actual dial on them? I keep it around because it works *great* and -it's one of the only ones that is truly hearing-aid compatible. 99.9% of the modern phones out there are not, regardless of the claims. In order to be hearing-aid compatible, a phone must have a high-impedance driver, which automatically eliminates the idea of using pizeo speakers. It doesn't matter how loud it actually is (the hearing aids take care of that) - what matters is if it creates a magnetic/RF signature for the hearing aids to pick up. And 99.9% of modern phones do not have this, since they use pizeo drivers nowdays. I sense a huge market opportunity here, since the "baby boomers" are retiring.

Re:Cost of billing?

[ceoyoyo]

How much do you suppose it costs to fight with people who go over the caps on their "unlimited" plans? Or to get sued for false advertising because of those unlimited plans? Or to monitor each and every packet to make sure nobody is torrenting or tethering?

Billing by usage for a modern information service should be a matter of turning on an option in some software you already bought, and hooking that up to your automatic report generator. A little bit of setup cost, and almost not cost from there on.

Re:Cost of billing?

[TheGratefulNet]

people think of me as 'gadget freak' and I have at least 6 pc's always running (mix of linux, bsd, xp, win7), I do embedded development (very much into arduino things these days) and I have my own hardware lab at home. I live in the bay area and have 30 yrs in software devel.

but I don't own a smartphone. don't really want to buy one either (or rather, don't want to pay $100/mo for the priviledge of being with the in-crowd and walking around touching a small flat panel pad thingie).

phone companies suck but mobile phone co's suck even worse. the whole system stinks. if your company is paying your way, fine. mine isn't and I'm not into all the hassles and 2yr contracts that come along with this in-crowd game.

its almost a fulltime job just knowing the various carriers, models, and having to dispose of your broken model (these aren't fixable by regular people and they are EOL'd very quickly) and relearn some new one, that's just not fun to me anymore. I can transition from one pc to another easily enough but doing that between various level of lock on phones is just crazy. (the vendors do this to us and we seem to just accept it!)

I choose not to take part in this rat race. I know that 'phone == fun' to a lot of you but it isn't that way for all of us. the carriers and the various lock-downs, fees and contracts all make a really unappealing package for those who are not already sucked into the system.

I get enough internet at home and at work. don't really need it while I'm away from my desk or system.

Re:Cost of billing?

[xaxa]

Is $75 normal? (I can't see the Verizon site outside the USA.)

Round here, basic phone service is about £10-15/month (slightly less if you shop around). Once you're paying £20/month or more you've got free anytime calls to most of Europe, the USA and the more modern Commonwealth countries. However, I don't know anyone with basic phone service, since broadband tends to be about £5/month extra.

Mum has a pay-as-you-go (prepay) mobile phone, which is fine for occasional use. I think she spends £10 every three months or so. Round here you can get a basic phone for almost nothing (e.g. here -- £10), or you can get one second hand from eBay for £1 + postage. Perhaps pick one that can take a headset, since there are special headsets available (here) for use with hearing aids. The main advantage of a newer, basic phone should be that the battery lasts for ages. (Obviously, bits of this will not apply to the USA.)

My dad (65) sent his first text while he was on holiday earlier this summer, and has since then accepted they might be useful (sometimes). My grandma (80?) was pestering him (no one told her she was too old to send texts). Stubbornness is not a good reason to get a voice-calls-only phone :-).

Re:Cost of billing?

[ScrewMaster]

I have no interest at all in owning a "smart phone" or whatever until per meg billing is abolished.

Well, I have T-Mobile and they're pretty good about it. I pay about $25/month for unlimited data. Now, as I understand it, you get 3G speeds up 'til ten gigs, after which they back you off to Edge network speeds. Some outfits just shut you off if you go over some limit, but even if I go over that ten gigs I still get service.

I'm not actually sure if that policy is still in force, however. But I've never had an issue with them, not one.

Re:Cost of billing?

[natehoy]

I'll give Jitterbug credit - they keep it very simple. $15 a month is pricey for 50 minutes, but at least you aren't needing to keep track of expiration dates, etc.

AT&T and Verizon both also offer "prepaid" cellphone plans. I used AT&T's for some years. A $100 "recharge" card buys you minutes that don't expire for a year, and IIRC a $25 card is good for three months. In other words, you can get a light-usage cell phone for a tad over $8 a month. Calls are 25 cents a minute (or ten cents a minute plus a dollar for each day you actually make or receive a call, your choice), and taken out of the prepaid amount. Tracphone and a generous mittenful of others offer similar pricing and features, and there are racks of recharge cards for various plans at any convenience store.

The problem with a lot of prepaid plans is not the per-minute charge (they are generally still cheaper than a payphone), but the expiration dates. Several offer very attractive per-minute rates, but have $50 cards that expire in 45 days or $10 cards that are only good for a week. At that rate, you're almost better off buying a basic voice-only contract plan.

Also, keep in mind that with a cell phone there's no such thing as a "local" or a "long distance" call, and there's no differentiation between "incoming" or "outgoing" calls. It's all airtime. If you are on the phone, you are using minutes. If you spend more than two minutes per day on the telephone talking anyone, regardless of whether you called them or they called you, or whether they are in your local exchange or not, the Jitterbug "Simply 14" plan won't have enough minutes for you. Nor will the AT&T prepaid plan at $100 a year. This is a big transition from people who are used to "free local" or "free incoming" calls like the local telcos tend to provide.

If you need more than 150 minutes a month or so of airtime (ie. if you spend about 5 minutes a DAY on the phone), you'll frequently find that a basic cell plan is less expensive than a prepaid. Most prepaids average about 25 cents a minute, meaning that your airtime is going to be nearly $40 a month for 150 minutes. You can get basic 450-minute plans for that kind of money. Buy your own "dumb-phone" unlocked handset off Amazon or whomever (making sure it's compatible with the carrier of your choice) and you won't be committed to a contract with an early termination fee. Freecycle frequently has people disposing of their old phones, and you can just use one of those if you want. Then you just buy a month-to-month account and if the carrier pisses you off you can get another used or unlocked phone for a different carrier and switch.

Of course, if you have Internet access, there's always VoIP companies like Vonage, or computer-based VoIP like Skype. Those lines are really cheap to run. Cheaper than most cell plans.

Keep in mind that, if you drop your landline, you are almost certainly also dropping location-aware 9-1-1 service. The GPS on your cell will almost certainly not work indoors, and cell triangulation is clumsy and inaccurate if it works at all. Vonage and others offer 9-1-1, but it just forwards to their own emergency response center and they may or may not be able to determine your local dispatcher and get your address to them even if they do. So if you want to be able to pick up the phone, dial 911, and gargle incoherently into the handset knowing that someone will show up shortly, losing your landline might not be for you.

Re:Cost of billing?

[IorDMUX]

I have no interest at all in owning a "smart phone" or whatever until per meg billing is abolished.

Many carriers have been moving to this billing method, over the past few years. My wife and I just moved from a Verizon plan with per meg billing on one phone and per text billing on the other to a Sprint plan with unlimited data and texts -- for the same price. The signal coverage isn't as good as Verizon (you get what you pay for), but it is quite liberating to not have to count texts or data allowances against days remaining in the billing cycle.

Re:Cost of billing?

[vlm]

Billing by usage for a modern information service should be a matter of turning on an option in some software you already bought, and hooking that up to your automatic report generator. A little bit of setup cost, and almost not cost from there on.

Well, you're talking "should be". Maybe if you buy your billing servers and routing/monitoring gear all from the same place and keep their versions up to date and in sync with each other. Also, now that one vendor owns you, they can extract all kinds of future costs at their whim. On the other hand, I'm talking about how the real world actually works, or more like, doesn't work.

Also, I think you might be aiming a little simplistically. Yes, once you enable SNMP access you're all done, so whats the big deal. However, the rest of the company gets turned upside down and inside out. Even the simplest next step of analysis, where you analyze the problems with connecting a billing server full of CC numbers to a public production network, now means all manner of documentation, procedures, headaches, testing, failure modes, and risks. Including dealing with people whom don't understand the risks at all, yet have very strong and authoritative opinions. Changing your whole business model is never, just flip a switch and its all good.

Flippantly, all you gotta do to get the star trek thing going, is tell your techies to make a warp field using gear the salesmen already sold you, and you're all done. Sure, its a little effort at first, but no problemo from there on.

Re:Cost of billing?

[Shados]

$75 probably includes other stuff, not just phone. That said, always keep in mind that when it comes to telecom prices, Asia Europe USA Canada. Its always been like this. In South Korea or Japan you can get for the equivalent of a few douzen US dollar the equivalent of a corporate connection that can cost 4 figures in Canada.

Re:Cost of billing?

[Shados]

Right, slashdot removes greater than and lower than signs. I meant that first world asian countries are cheaper than many places in Europe that is significantly cheaper than USA that is leaps and bound cheaper than Canada.

Re:Cost of billing?

[BoberFett]

I'm the same way. I've got PCs all over the place at home and I'm a developer by trade, but when it comes to electronic gadgets people think I'm a Luddite. I have a prepaid TMobile phone, the cheapest one that I could find three years ago. I have no interest in paying $1000/yr for a phone and frankly I don't see how most of the population can afford and/or justify it.

Re:Cost of billing?

[iammani]

Ahh my insomnia is taking its toll. I cannot believe I submitted the above comment. Here is a syntax checked version of above comment.

If I may say so, jitterbug plans are a complete rip off, you will be much better off with a pay as you go t-mobile prepaid plan. $100 buys 1000 minutes, which is valid for 1 year. You can top-up when you want to and be billed exactly for the minutes you have used.

Re:Cost of billing?

[KingAlanI]

If you could hold your nose and buy it despite its marketing

I have indeed seen Jitterbug's elderly-focused advertising.

For them and in general:

Is the product really best suited the assigned niche? Conversely, is it poorly suited to people outside that niche? If not, the niche marketing may be counterproductive. If you happen to be outside the niche but are otherwise interested, is it your fault for not being able to see past it, or their fault for putting that in your way? (Then again, the company may gain a lot for themselves and do a lot for those who are in the target niche; good for them and I'm OK with that, just with me staying away.)

P.S
(My phone happens to be a garden-variety Samsung on Verizon, though.)

Re:Cost of billing?

[vlm]

If you happen to be outside the niche but are otherwise interested, is it your fault for not being able to see past it, or their fault for putting that in your way?

The offensive-ness that I'm referring to in the advertising is not some sort of anti- multicultural overreaction against the chosen customers of vmobile or jitterbug, but the offensiveness of the whole market situation of assuming an "average dude" desperately wants to be screwed over, but if you're in some little subculture maybe you might not want to be screwed over, oh but you'd only want to be treated fairly if you're not a middle aged white dude, gotta be some other group.

It would be like an ad assuming that "average people" enjoy smashing their skulls with dropped sledgehammers, but we sell a universal fit commodity construction dude hard hat, and ONLY if you're a recent south east asian immigrant you might want to buy our hard hat to protect your skull (and the rest of you can just suffer). Why can't I want the same good deal?

This is $90 million on a billing error?

[troll -1]

Mobile providers make way too much money. They're always nickle and dimming.

Thank God they don't run the Internet

Otherwise:

• You'd buy your computer from your ISP and it wouldn't work with any other ISP.
• Email would be like texting, sold as a separate service.
• There would be no DNS. You'd get IP addresses from directory services, the way you get telephone numbers, and type them in your browser.
• Your time on the Internet would be billed per minute.
• Your monthly bill would list every website you went to. Overseas sites would be billed at a higher rate.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[operagost]

You'd buy your computer from your ISP and it wouldn't work with any other ISP.

Although, to be fair, most computers would be free.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[vlm]

Although, to be fair, most computers would be free.

But most of the features would be disabled by the ISP "to reduce their support costs".

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God they don't run the Internet

Depends on your definition of "run"?

* posted via Verizon FiOS

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[bsDaemon]

I'm sure there would be DNS. It does a grand bit more than many people realize. Additionally, I suspect that in your scenario, there would be a dramatic curbing of malware and spam, especially once users began to get super pissed off about getting bandwidth usage charges for having to download the messages. Anything that makes the spam stop is acceptable.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[AnonymousClown]

Aside from the computer, it sounds like AOL in the 90s.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[MBGMorden]

I know. I remember back when one of the companies started offering 40 hours per month for the same price AOL was charging for 15 hours. I thought I was in heaven. Heck I had almost TWO HOURS PER DAY available to be online with my spiffy 14.4k modem. This was after growing up using BBS's with a 2400 BAUD modem. Damn I feel old and I'm not even 30 yet :(.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[barzok]

Verizon Wireless is a separate company from the rest of Verizon. Just like the catalog & web operations of many retailers are separate from their brick & mortar stores.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[omnichad]

Sure, but it would stop working by the end of two years.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[omnichad]

And because Vodafone has a 50% stake in Verizon Wireless, where they have zero ownership of Verizon.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[ScrewMaster]

I know. I remember back when one of the companies started offering 40 hours per month for the same price AOL was charging for 15 hours. I thought I was in heaven. Heck I had almost TWO HOURS PER DAY available to be online with my spiffy 14.4k modem. This was after growing up using BBS's with a 2400 BAUD modem. Damn I feel old and I'm not even 30 yet :(.

Get off my lawn. I started out on a 300 bps acoustic coupler, using a 110 baud Olivetti teletype.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[spire3661]

You have a funny definition of free. Subsidizing the cost of hardware through a service contract is not free.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[Myopic]

I am so much happier having paid for my computer and internet connection, than having gotten my phone for free and paying for phone service. My phone costs about double my internet, my internet is approximately ten bajillion times more useful, and also by the way fuck AT&T with a pointy stick.

So, not to you personally, but to anyone who tries to make that argument for real, eat me.

I have actually been trying to buy a phone since the beginning of Bush's second term, and so far no store has been willing to sell me one. People on the internet are willing, but I want to touch and try a phone before shelling out for it, and literally 100% of phone stores refuse to sell me a phone for cost of production + reasonable profit (somewhere in the range of 5%-50%). So fuck 'em. Fuck the whole industry. I wish I could spend hundreds of dollars on a fancy phone, but no, their stupid fucking shenanigans mean I am still using a dumb phone from 2002.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[tekrat]

Find out who the spammers are and firebomb their houses then. Find out what school their kids go to and hold them hostage. Only after spammers start winding up in the Hudson (or Yellow River, whichever is appropriate), with two bullets in their head will spammers ever get the message and stop.

And why is the relevant to this entire story about Verizon? Because if you ask any spammer, he'll tell you he's "just a businessman". Another thread for this slashdot post had someone claiming that no excecutive at Verizon stoops to being 'evil', and they delude themselves that they are just doing business, and they aren't trying to actively screw their customer base, but you see, they are.

They are "businessmen" just like the spammers. And apparently, the be a businessman, you have to be completely amoral. You have to throw every sense of deceny out the window and strive to do everything that we consider 'evil', but in the name of business.

It's like when you're standing on the rubber sheet in front of the mob boss, and he tells you that you're about the killed, but it's nothing personal, it's just business.

Business is war. You against the world. So nothing is not justifiable in the name of business. Therefore, killing a spammer can be justified as "business", if you run an ISP and the spammer is passing the cost of those emails on to you. Or if you bill hourly and are losing money reading spam.....

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[sjames]

No, they'd just be prorated with interest into your monthly bill You MIGHT be permitted to bring your own (perhaps you just don't feel like backing the old one up bit by bit and laboriously reloading the new and different one bit by bit), but you'd still pay for a new one in your billing and they would still charge a rapacious early termination fee in spite of having no costs to recover except the cost of providing the world's crappiest service at premium prices.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[Anonymous Coward]

nah, i tried to block a phone number recently and they told me there's no way to do it. these guys don't even have something as simple as a firewall. they have way more interest in selling you a directory service and 25 cent connection fee than upgrading their last century technology.

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[PrimaryConsult]

If you're ever visiting Europe or Japan, you'll get just such an option. Of course, to use it here you're limited to T-Mobile and AT&T, and good luck using the warranty...

Re:This is $90 million on a billing error?

[Myopic]

Yeah, sim cards, that's great tech. I have AT&T now and love the sim card idea (still hate AT&T). T-Mobile has the same, you say? I didn't know that.

I really don't understand cell phone companies

[penguinchris]

As others have noted, this is because of the practice of making the internet connection the most easy to select thing on the phone... despite the fact that extremely few people without smartphones use the internet on their phones. The two phones I had before I got an unlocked Nexus One were like this - you had to be careful because it's so easy to start the web browser, and there's no way to disable it. Nowadays, people also complain about the bloatware on Android phones, and now there's no easy way to get an unlocked Android phone.

Sure, these companies can get away with whatever they want because there's not really a cell phone free market in the US. Since they're already getting away with whatever they want, though, why do they purposefully make customers angry with this kind of stuff?

They act as if they don't actually make any money on selling phones and service, and their business model relies on tricking people into ridiculous charges. That's obviously not true, and it's simply insulting to the customers not only to nickel and dime them "legitimately", but also to trick them into paying ridiculous fees like this.

I *don't* think there should be more regulation, but I hope that the FCC continues to do things like this, to the point where it's no longer profitable for the cell carriers to act like such assholes. Maybe then people won't hate them so much, too.

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Try checking out the tmobile g2. as far as i know this is plain android without htc sense, motoblur, etc bloatware.

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[trapnest]

there's no easy way to get an unlocked Android phone.

Never heard of craigslist or ebay? I unlock phones every day. It's not a hard thing.

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[Wocka_Wocka]

Since they're already getting away with whatever they want, though, why do they purposefully make customers angry with this kind of stuff?

They do this for three reasons: there are no real, harmful repercussions for their actions due to the endless herd of consumers that will replace any lost customer 50 to 1; because they can; and greed.

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[vlm]

there's not really a cell phone free market in the US.

I *don't* think there should be more regulation,

If, as you correctly observe, the market is unfree, why wouldn't you want it to be regulated to be fairer? There seems to be no other valid justification for regulation, so why apply it?

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[Anonymous Coward]

there's no way to change what your shortcut keys do? ..

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[Anonymous Coward]

If, as you correctly observe, the market is unfree, why wouldn't you want it to be regulated to be fairer? There seems to be no other valid justification for regulation, so why apply it?

Because that's admitting that one of his core governmental beliefs may in actuality not be as absolutely right as he's always believed. Once you give in and start really looking at your long-held beliefs, you realize there may possibly be other solutions. We can't have people start up with this radical idea of self-reflection now, can we?

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[Myopic]

I *don't* think there should be more regulation

YOU DON'T?!? Fer fuck's sake, what will it take to get through to people like you? You sit there and rant about bad corporate behavior, you recognize that government is the solution to the problem, and then you state that you don't favor more regulation. There is this asinine anti-regulation ideology in America for which we all suffer, and it's a big pain to deal with.

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[tompaulco]

If your business model is dependent upon deceiving your customers, then you don't deserve to be in business. Cell Phone companies are a goo example. So are Cable companies, Labor Law Poster companies are a shining example.
Unfortunately, most companies seem to be moving toward this marketing method. Even big companies like Microsoft and Oracle will sell you lies to get you onto their product at least far enough to where it will be more painful to switch back than to keep plowing forward.

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[tompaulco]

The market is unfree at least partly BECAUSE of regulation. Even if you had $10 Billion, you can't just go and start a cell phone company. There are all kinds of regulations which artificially limit the number of cell phone companies that can be in existence.
However, the government is not the biggest culprit in creating the lack of competition. The biggest issue is the consumer. Whereas there are many people like us who think the prices are too high and the limitations too strict, there are many, many millions of sheeple out there who will not make the WISE choice of saying "No, I would rather do without than pay the rate that you ask". These people imagine that they can not live without a data plan and a smart phone, forgetting that just a few short years ago, there was no such thing as a smart phone or a data plan, and that 90% of the use of such now is to download new Fart apps.

Re:I really don't understand cell phone companies

[sjames]

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the PHONE company.

i've seen blackberries make spontaneous calls

[alen]

my wife's VZW blackberry and my Sprint BB do this all the time. in my case i thought it was pressing on something but it would call my wife's grandmother. i might have called the number a few weeks ago and it wasn't in my address book and not in the recent calls list. yet somehow the phone would spontaneously call her.

in my wife's case she keeps calling me and all i hear is background sounds. i'll hang up but she calls again

Re:i've seen blackberries make spontaneous calls

[Anonymous Coward]

I may very well be talking out my ass, but I suspect that you've assigned a shortcut key to speed-dial that number. And then you are accidentally pressing the shortcut key, or there's a mechanical issue that's causing that key to be pressed (like a short).

I put a password on my blackberry, to avoid accidental butt-dialing. But since I talk out my ass, maybe that's not such a huge issue....

differences in response

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon is issuing credits and refunds. ATT would tell us and the govt to GTH, and be figuring out ways to leech even more $$$ out via related means. Oh yeah, and their coverage areas stink.

What a Double Standard!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Verizon customer for my personal phone - an aging LG Env2 - which I carry only for text and voice emergencies. It's time to swap it out, and to swap out for the LG Env3 - essentially the same phone, I'm required to pay for a $10/month data plan. I'm actually unable to purchase the phone without this data plan. I don't care about the $10, it's the fact I *know* I never use data on this phone. I want the battery life, and the qwerty keyboard. There isn't another phone that offers anything near the Env3s stats for these that you can get without a data plan.

So - if you accidentally hit 'mobile web' you can get your $1.99 back, but if you want a phone with the mobile web button from here on out - you have to pay $10/month. Am I the only one that feels that this is just outright theft?

Re:What a Double Standard!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Verizon customer for my personal phone - an aging LG Env2 - which I carry only for text and voice emergencies.

You fool. Go with a prepaid service and spend vastly less per month without a contract.

Wee!!

[egibster]

I prefer my free quantum mass phone, but thanks.

Erroneous billing error?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that like being mistaken about a mistake?

Following up on a conjecture

[MillionthMonkey]

This is totally conjecture, but I doubt Verizon would have been so willing to issue refunds without pressure.

Hmmmm.... while I'm not sure a proof of this conjecture can be produced via rigorous mathematical analysis, any mathematician with Verizon service probably disagrees.

Re:Following up on a conjecture

[omnichad]

Verizon mathematicians don't know the difference between dollars and cents.

Re:Following up on a conjecture

[commodore64_love]

I confirmed it with the representative I spoke to, and she confirmed it "point zero zero two cents per kilobyte."..... I received my bill and was charged $.002/KB - which is dollars - "point zero zero 2 dollars per kilobyte"..... I'm still currently on the hook for the $71 and change.

That's pathetic. He should have been charged $0.71 or 71 cents.

He wasted 25 minutes to a Verizon rep who kept insisting .002 dollars is the same as .002 cents
Stupid shit. Stupid fuck. Stui9d college dropout. I would have been cursing at the guy.

Office Space

[Anonymous Coward]

They were always off by a decimal point or something...

it's about damned time!

[Munden]

I reported this to Verizon and my employer back in March and even commented about it on Slashdot back in June http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1692266&cid=32632558

I will enjoy this day of kudos and smug satisfaction of being unquestionably right.

Not just wireless.

[stonecypher]

My very first FiOS bill arrived at more than double the two year guaranteed price.

Weeks later, they still haven't sorted it out.

Re:Not just wireless.

[tekrat]

I had the same issue: I signed up for 89.99 per month, and on month 1 I recieved a $220 bill. Needless to say, after many heated calls to Verizon, it was only after I contacted the FCC and the State Attourney General that Verizon was even *willing* to discuss a renegotiation of the bill.

Before that, all I got from them was "pay the bill" and "the salesman lied to you, it's $220". Verizons reps always believe what the bill says, not what your contract says. I was asking where these extra charges came from, and after they babbled on and on, it essentially came down to "we make shit up", to which I said, "Great, I'll be sending you a $1000 bill for my time, since I can make shit up too."

Verizon is a monopoly and they know it. They are more than willing to screw their entire customer base, as most of those people have no place else to go. I'm surprised the "refunds" they have to apply are so low. That tells me that that's all the goverment FOUND.

I was overcharged hundreds of dollars

[bmidgley]

It looks like this is unrelated, but a fun adventure for everyone.

I had a motorola flip phone I was using for tethering with verizon in 2007. I started getting bills for $600, $700, $800 for each month. I would call in and they would fix it. After about three months of this they told me they would not fix it any more. I had to get a firmware upgrade after which tethering stopped working. The device was worthless to me.

When I looked at the bill, it seems I was being charged per minute if I connected through the 1xrtt network. One rep actually told me "unlimited broadband" meant only unlimited when it was 3g and I was responsible to pay for when it connected at the slower speed. But there was no way to disable the 1xrtt fallback. It was just a convenient lie.

Then the collections department started calling me, saying "when do you think you will be paying this $1800 bill?" I asked them if they knew there were open tickets on the account to fix the broken charges. It basically came back to "but when do you think you will be paying this bill?"

I insisted on a device replacement and they got me a palm treo that worked ok but never as well as the flip phone for what I needed. They also reversed all the bad charges.

I quit verizon when the contract was done and I'm never going back.

It doesn't take much delusion...

[FriendlyPrimate]

'I've yet to meet an executive so far gone that he believes you can overcharge your customers and then repay the principal when you get caught. They like to be a lot more subtle than that.

It doesn't take much for executives (and people in general) to delude themselves into thinking they're doing the right thing. Executives have an ethical responsibility to do whatever is in the best interest of the stockholders. Therefore, if it means more money for stockholders for them to screw over customers with a slight possibility of getting a hand slap at some point in the future, then it is their moral responsibility to do so.

Re:It doesn't take much delusion...

[mea37]

Wow. You're anti-corporate but can't do better than that old crutch of an argument?

First of all, "ethical" and "moral" are not interchangable as you seem to think they are. Fortunately it doesn't matter, because neither moral nor ethical requirements (nor legal ones, for that matter) are overridden by an executives fiduciary duty to the shareholders. The only people who think it is are those who want an excuse to hate executives and assume that everything they do is illegal.

Want to prove me wrong? Buy some shares in any major corporation of your choosing, and try to initiate a shareholder lawsuit alleging that the company could've stolen more money for your benefit. Let us know how that works out for you.

Re:It doesn't take much delusion...

[FriendlyPrimate]

I think you misunderstand. I'm not claiming all executives think like this. However, it is one way some executives justify their actions. Right now, I work for a major corporation who's business expansion plan is to purchase other U.S. companies, gut them, outsource the jobs to India/China, and use the savings to purchase more companies. And it's all done under the guise that the executives are ethically required to do what is in the best interests of the shareholders. So yea...I guess I'm a little anti-corporate when I see how greedy and callous some executives can get.

Re:It doesn't take much delusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Wrong. It is NEVER a moral responsibility to exploit people.

While you have a cogent point about executives having a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the shareholders, that neither permits nor excuses the suspension of general ethics or morality.

Re:It doesn't take much delusion...

[FlyHelicopters]

In your opinion...

In error.

[BigMeanBear]

Erroneous bill is in error.

Album art?

[phorm]

Sounds like your phone/player may have had some feature like "download album art" or something similar turned on?

be aware if you have a VOIP account...

[jvismara]

it looks like they are not addressing another illegal charge: I have a VOIP account that gives me a local phone number to make international calls. I used it from my cell and Verizon charged me $1.4 / min to call Brazil, when I was not using their system to make an international call. I was using their network to call a local domestic number in the US. When discussing the problem with Verizon, they told me that their system was charged because of my call and they have to re-pass that cost to me... interesting that my local telephone company does not have that charge and do not re-pass any INVENTED costs to me. The fact that they traced that number as being a bridge of a VOIP company, shows their absolute lack of ethics. be aware of this scam by Verizon Wireless...

and it was called "Minitel"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

Except email was not sold as a separate service and one of its purposes was to *BE* a directory service.

First hand account?

[mcrbids]

I can say first hand, with confidence, the $5 refunds they are "giving" are a joke, and pale in comparison to the problem.

I have a large family, and *had* a large family plan to match. Every single month I had "mystery charges" that they couldn't explain. No, it's not just one month, it's month after month of spending hours on the phone sorting out why the !@#$ I'm getting charges without decent explanation.

Charges with names like "account restoral fee" (on a line that had been in continuous use for years) and "recovery surcharge". (what's being recovered? And why am I being charged for it!?) Charges that, when enquired about, nobody could justify. Charges so egregious that it sometimes doubled my total bill.

I wrote letters, I complained, I got stonewalled and nobody said much. I switched providers to Metro PCS, where the deal is simple: prepaid, unlimited calling, no contract. Wow, what a difference! I pay my bill, I get service. I don't, the service quits. The bill is always the same - no surprises, and they don't even have a shutoff/restoral fee so if I'm late paying the bill, I go online and pay, and within a few minutes, service is active.

Verizon, I was one of your best customers, but now, you've lost me for good. And I don't hesitate to talk about it.

Re:First hand account?

[cbhacking]

I refer to it as Verizon's "Bullshit fee" as in "How much bullshit can we pile on this customer's statement before he calls to bitch about it?"

I've never had it double my costs, but a 2-person family plan that should be about $92/month frequently gets bills as high as $110. I seem to spend way too much time on the phone with their people - doesn't that cost them money too? They must be raking it in to make it worth putting up with the extra callers. I'm personally counting down the weeks until I can tell Verizon to take a flying leap without paying the ETF.

Free market lesson

[Myopic]

If you claim to be for "free markets" and yet support this government action, you are a hypocrite. Regulation of billing practices and customer remuneration is a market regulation; free markets are markets with zero regulations; this kind of enforcement action is absolutely anathema to free markets.

Markets are good, free markets are bad.

Why is this never criminal?

[swb]

OK, I get why the FCC began investigating this -- regulating VZW is part of their turf. But criminal fraud is usually investigated by the FBI, and isn't that what this is?

Surely "accidental" data access & billing was known and if not explicitly planned for, was greenlighted anyway by high level people with that kind of authority. At a minimum, it spanned many devices, so it wasn't a one-off "oops" with the LG Butterfinger and bad programming. It certainly looks like a deliberate, intentional attempt to defraud customers.

Why is this corporate overcharging never considered an organized criminal conspiracy? Even though it may not be totally "fair", why isn't at least one executive (or more!) considered personally liable and hauled in front of a criminal court? At worst it's always a "corporate" crime, the settlement involves at best a check for $5, at worst a coupon for discounts on future purchases (which is really a negative benefit).

And the reality is that the "fine" or "settlement amount" comes out of some contingency account that's funded through higher rates charged to everyone; it's not like the damn government even has the cajones to require the executive bonus pool pay the fines.

Why does it have to be a $500+ million Ponzi scheme before anyone goes to jail?

normal bs

[luther349]

every company does it really the case with telcos. look at every bill you get other then maybe rent. your gonna find stupid charges.

Houston, we've had a problem...

[KingAlanI]

it pulled the money from my account but didn't give it to me.

shouldn't the add and subtract operations both be run before anything is committed?

Re:Houston, we've had a problem...

[Dewin]

Well, I think what happened is the internal transfer between accounts happened, but the ATM missed the memo and thus never gave me my money.

If your internet connection happens to flake out after you submit a transfer request on online banking, the request will still go through but you'll never get the notification that it did. Similar thing -- though I'd think there would still be better protections against it.