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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."
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.
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.
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.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
As opposed to the usual error free billing errors?
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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Thank God they don't run the Internet
Otherwise:
$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.
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.
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.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
'$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.
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.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
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.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.