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

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?

[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:"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.

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:"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: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.

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.