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Verizon Backtracks On $2 Convenience Fee
Velcroman1 writes with a followup to yesterday's news that Verizon would be implementing a $2 'convenience fee' for certain online and phone-based bill payments. In addition to dealing with outrage from customers, Verizon also felt resistance from the Federal Communications Commission, who decided they would investigate the matter. Today, in a brief press release, Verizon announced that they've canceled their plans for the new fee in response to customer feedback.
That charge you for the privilege of paying your damn bill! GAHHHH!!!!!
That tends to get the attention of politicians.
They may have backtracked on this "convenience fee", but Verizon will still get their $2 from their customers, just not as obviously.
I have not canceled my offer for them to lick my asshole.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I would love to see the FCC continue the investigation. The timing seems too suspicious fro Verizon to have mysteriously give a shit about their customers opinions.
...they will no doubt try to make themselves looks a hero for not screwing us over by adding that charge. Yes, us. I was already looking at other carriers, only for the principle of charging us more for costing them less.
This is as bad as when the phone company charged $4 a month for "touch tone service" when it actually costs them less to provide it than to deal with pulse dialing.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Silly of them to be so upfront about their charges. That flies in the face of industry practice. I expect $3.50 will show up in mysterious voodoo charges now. Take that peons.
It seems like the FCC is the only government agency making any decisions/taking any actions that i actually agree with these days =P
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
When are these idiots going to realize that bullshit charges like this aren't going to fly anymore? First Bank of America with their ridiculous ATM card fee and now Verizon with this. Consumers are finally waking up, and they're tired of what basically amounts to theft.
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Are we still going to boycott them anyway, even though they changed their minds?
This may be slightly off-topic, but don't some Satellite/Cable companies do similar things? I seem to recall a particular provider charging $5/month if you didn't sign up for auto-pay and/or paperless billing. The reason was that they wanted to save trees. However, the same nameless provider would send mailers at least a couple times a month if you canceled their service, thereby negating the the "tree savings." Seems like Verizon and other companies are just trying to make another buck by taking advantage of their customer once they've been locked into a contract.
I lived in the US for 3 years, and this doesn't come as a surprise to me. Big corporations will screw you as much as possible, and the sticker price is NEVER what you end up paying. Internet is $20/month... plus line maintenance, phone regulatory fee, tax, something I just made up charge that sounds legit, the "I wonder if they will pay this" levy... it goes on forever! I laughed/cried when 911 showed up on my phone bill as a line-item charge. WTF?!?
Seriously, US consumers get the worst deal on the planet for most things... but it's sold as if you're getting an absolute bargain.
Personally I'm more than happy to be back in boring old England where things cost what they are advertised as, and I have *REAL* choice of Phone, Internet, Electricity, Natural Gas, etc.... and not just the city-endorsed (aka. "Bought and Paid for") local monopoly that is all too common in the US. The government recently outlawed excessive Credit Card fees, like when you buy a plane ticket and they charge you £15 to use a credit card when it only costs them £0.50 or something similar. At least our guys have the balls to stand up to big-business... when will your corrupt politicians follow suit?
The entire phone system is wrong. Phone companies should be coming to consumers with ever cheaper prices for more bandwidth. Instead they keep finding ways to charge more for less. It is time for people to take control of their data needs and put cities in charge of data infrastructure just as they are for water and sewage. The phone companies could bid to manage cities data infrastructure within the limits set out by the people. This would put people back in control of their own infrastructure and take away the phone companies ability to over charge for service.
A petition on change.org pulled in about 100k signatures in 12 hours, each signature sending a notification to Verizon's customer service department. It was authored by a woman named Molly, who also beat up Bank of America with a popular petition a few months ago. Massing consumer outrage like this seems to have at least some impact.
From The Washington Post:
So, for now, you can continue to earn airline miles at Verizon's expense.
Netflix, bank of america, Verizon, godaddy, etc. Is 2011 year of the corporate fuck up? Is it that corporations are making more boneheaded mistakes? Or is it that people are not willing to tolerate these boneheaded anti-customer mistakes anymore?
Yeah, that's real plagiarism. I'm sure something that you would consider "plagiarism" went through the minds of a couple thousand people when they read the headlines. Get over yourself. It's especially rich of you to say that when one of your own blogs says "One should never complain about someone else stealing your ideas." As if this is a real idea.
Be forced as part of basic?
Whenever you see companies treating customers like garbage it means they don't have enough competition. That's all Verizon is telling us here. They're saying "you've basically allowed telephone companies to operate as local monopolies and so as monopolists we don't have to compete for customers."...
Simple as that. It's our own fault. If you don't like what they're doing then don't let them monopolize things anymore. Open up their area for more phone companies. Let other companies run telephone lines if they want in parallel. See if Verizon treats their customers poorly then... they'll be too terrified of losing them. As it should be...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Suck it bitches!
Honestly ANY company that charges for online payments is ran by scumbags. Complete and utter SCUMBAGS.
It's cheaper for them to process an online payment than to hire someone to open an envelope and handle the check. They were just trying hard to be as evil as possible, A tradition at Verizon.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It was a right proper example of increasingly monopolistic corporations levying private taxes, too.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
How is it plagiarism to say a corporation will find another way to fleece its customers? I have to agree with the AC below, on this one.
Is it "ZOMG!plagiarizm!" if one wasn't aware of it ahead of time? Some have better things to do than monitor the Twatterverse.
My .02.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Years ago when the FUSF telecom fee expired (to pay for the 1898 Spanish American War) Verizon decided to introduce a new fee that somehow just randomly was the same value as the old federal fee. They backed down pretty quick once the feds got involved but for christ sakes like John Stewart said "BE A PERSON".
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A la carte pricing is great. It lets me economize simply by changing behaviors. In this case, I can save $2 by using my bank's online bill pay.
Now that they've changed their minds about this fee, you know they will find another way to charge us. That was never in doubt. But how they charge us might not be so obvious next time, and that means we may not be given the opportunity to save money.
So are we really better off today than we were yesterday?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Checked out their "convenience" fees lately? They charge a fee for printing out your ticket using your printer, paper, and ink.
greylines sentence:
They may have backtracked on this "convenience fee", but Verizon will still get their $2 from their customers, just not as obviously.
Harry McCracken's tweet:
When Verizon says it won't charge $2 for online payments, it's saying it'll get $2 out of you in some less obvious manner. Some victory.
I see NOTHING plagiaristic. Having the same idea isn't the same as plagiarism.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions.
The fee was designed to increase the efficiency of the online transaction. I have to give them credit, I would never have the balls to say something like that, which is probably why it is a good thing that I am not in business.
Hey now, both of them are written in English and both of them contain the 50 cent word "obvious" (albeit in different forms). Clearly plagiarism.
Who the fuck is Harry McCracken?
Honest question--How many people *don't* use auto pay? It seems like a horrible inconvenience to have to log in and pay every month. This whole thing may have been an attempt to help the customers realize that auto pay is an option (easier, AND it's free!). They probably dedicate a lot of resources to reminding people they need to pay, and dealing with late payments, etc. Customers who don't use auto-pay almost certainly cost them more than those who do use it (reminders, late payments, etc). So why not let the customers who allow them to streamline the process pay less? (because you know that the extra overhead for one-time-payments will be paid for by everyone through higher prices).
This would put people back in control of their own infrastructure and take away the phone companies ability to over charge for service.
And allow the governments to overcharge for service.
You mention water and sewage as an example. Where I live, add on a "runoff fee" to deal with that stuff called "rain" that falls from the sky and isn't absorbed by the ground under your house. And a fee to fix the roads. And a fee to trim trees. And a fee to fix sidewalks. And a fee for the bus system.
Phone bills? The local paper has a story today about a proposal to add a fee to the phone bill to pay for improving passenger rail service. Even if you never ride a train in your life, you are expected to pay for it.
Yes, government has found a way to tax the water you drink to pay for just about anything else it wants to do. Why would you expect phone service to be anything different?
It appears they are doing the same thing, if you are late and trying to avoid being turned off then they're going to milk you for another $2.00
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." ~Ozzy Osborne
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work.
So first of all your argument is wrong because it doesn't have to be exact. I felt the use of the word "obvious/obviously" and the fact that it was a throwaway line made it seem heavily influenced by McCracken's tweet and has the exact same sentiment. At best it's a coincidence but it might not be, I'm just saying.
But considering I put a nice little ;) at the end basically means I wasn't trying to stir up something all that serious, but fire up your flamethrowers if it makes you happy, I'll be off somewhere else.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
DELETE from TRANSACTION_TYPE where fee='2' and type='card';
INSERT INTO general_fees VALUES (2,'general telecommunications surcharge');
Good people go to bed earlier.
Yes. This fee screws the people who can least afford it. People who pay their bill online or by phone on a one-off basis are usually the people who are struggling to pay that bill at all. By charging those folks an extra fee, Verizon basically said, "Screw the poor." To which I say, "Screw Verizon."
Sure, those folks pose a higher risk of non-payment. That doesn't mean Verizon has the right to discriminate against them, and it certainly doesn't mean Verizon is justified in charging them extra fees that increase the risk of non-payment. They're basically starting to act like credit card companies, and need to be dealt with in the same way that we dealt with them—with harsh federal regulations that punish such behavior. It's really the only way to deal with companies that are so big that they feel unthreatened by competition.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to run a wireless company?
Just how many campaigns you have to 'contribute' to..
How many local politicians you have to promise 'jobs' to just to get tax breaks on your call centers.. (for 4 years, when you close up and move to a new location)..
Don't forget marketing.. Because a really great service and price don't sell themselves...
Don't forget.. you have to subsidize those phone costs.. and arrange kickbacks (err, agreements) to put certain software on the smartphones that people can't uninstall....
And we haven't even gotten to executive compensation, to attract the best talent around..
Sorry.. I'm too depressed to continue...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Phil McCracken's brother?
We must unite and overthrow these morons. How you say? We need what they provide? Come up with something better and get the public behind the technology. Beat to death anyone who wants to make more than a reasonable return.
I will think consumers have had enough when it becomes dangerous to be a Telecom Executive.
Nobody copied that chucklefuck, everyone pretty much thought about it if they lived in the 21st century.
Add Verizon to the list of "Corporate Miscalculations of 2011"
There Verizon will join GoDaddy, Netflix and Bank Of America.
To all of the people who pull the dodge of saying people can't do anything remember these companies. They were all read to dick Americans over, without lube, until ordinary people stood up for themselves and forced them to backpedal.
Hey Corporate America:
In case you haven't figured it out yet Americans are feeling squeezed. On one side everyone is asking for more of their money and on the other side they are unsure about their income. A quick way to piss your customers off is to try to gouge more out of them.
I pay the Verizon bill by having my bank, ESL, mail them a check. No fee from Verizon and all the convenience of on-line bill paying.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
That's how it happens. Okay, I can't charge nominal fee for an extra service? Well, I'm going to have my cake and eat it anyway. System access fee increased by 2$!
What? I can't charge a system access fee? Fine...All plans increased by 2$! Mwahahahahaha.
"I want my two dollars!"
Paul Christoforo of OceanMarketing.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Pretty soon we'll see $3 Online Service cost recovery fee.
except named something more obscure.
Or they could just quietly add a charge an extra $5 a month to everyone logging online to review their call history details, minutes or KBs of data used; waived for the first few months of service, so after your 60 day cool-off period for your new contract is done, the new charge begins to take effect.
This is as bad as when the phone company charged $4 a month for "touch tone service" when it actually costs them less to provide it than to deal with pulse dialing.
I always thought it was more egregious for them to charge for NOT listing your number, rather than for listing it. When asked, reps always gave some lame excuse, like it costs money to flag to remove the listing entry...
The modern day equivalent would be getting charged $0.10 or more to send SMS text msgs, which costs the carrier nothing. Or being charged to fetch your voicemail even though M2M calls (within network calls) are free. Or Sprint's lovely policy of forcing you to sign a 2 year contract even if you bring your own phone -- despite the justification for ETF's and contracts being handset subsidies...
Yes. This fee screws the people who can least afford it. People who pay their bill online or by phone on a one-off basis are usually the people who are struggling to pay that bill at all. By charging those folks an extra fee, Verizon basically said, "Screw the poor." To which I say, "Screw Verizon."
Sure, those folks pose a higher risk of non-payment. That doesn't mean Verizon has the right to discriminate against them, and it certainly doesn't mean Verizon is justified in charging them extra fees that increase the risk of non-payment. They're basically starting to act like credit card companies, and need to be dealt with in the same way that we dealt with them—with harsh federal regulations that punish such behavior. It's really the only way to deal with companies that are so big that they feel unthreatened by competition.
Because everyone just let's people take money directly from their account... Personally, only my mortgage and car payment are direct ach's from my accout because they are fixed amounts. My power, water, gas, cable, all tend to fluctuate to some degree. Phone bills do to, usually to a lesser extent though. It is far easier to fix a billing error BEFORE the bill is paid.
It also disproportionately benefits the poor. For you and me, $2 may not mean much, but for a person on a fixed income, saving $2 could make a real difference.
Because you know without this fee, Verizon will find some other way to raise prices. And when they do, they may not be so obvious about it, and that means they may not give the poor that opportunity to save money.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
honestly, many people who who pay online or via phone are people who want to see what the charges are before they pay. I know that the things that I have set up on auto pay I parely look at the bills
If there were another way, they would do that in addition to the payment fee. Responsibility to the shareholders requires it. When you "economize" you steal money from them! If you want the opportunity to pay more, however, Verizon is ready to serve you. Maybe they can arrange a 10% discount if you agree to have your bill doubled?
The idiots where I live don't think they pay nearly enough taxes. Every single fucking time there is a tax initiative on the local ballot they run to the poll to vote for it. I don't get it. The last one passed by over 80 percent and yet everyone I talk to bitches about taxes but they still vote for more. "Oh, we need that!" they say and I say well quit bitching about taxes moron since you're the reason for them. But they just look confused. I hate living in an idiocracy.
Stop right there... text messages do not cost the carrier nothing. The carrier needs to maintain SMSC infrastructure, carrier interconnect agreements, billing infrastructure, and no doubt government enforced interception infrastructure. None of these things costs $0.00 to maintain, so claiming that it costs the carrier nothing is flat out bullshit. One could (quite rightly) argue that the cost of text messages is way too high, but there's always bundles that reduce the cost of messages down to the less than a cent level so even that is a bit shaky.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
hihi im new here greetings from http://www.redwheaten-akani.de the Rhodesian Ridgeback
I believe this was just a ”what if” now they know and will brainstorm some other crapp to see if it will fly.
Remember New Coke? I found the alternative to be BS, to avoid fees use USPS, mail in the payment. They were asking you to go green and be paperless, how two faced.
Hmm, so they, for once took customer feedback seriously? What the heck just happened? A galaxy must have just imploded somewhere (from our vantage point, that is).
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The carrier needs to maintain SMSC infrastructure, carrier interconnect agreements, billing infrastructure, and no doubt government enforced interception infrastructure.
They'd have to maintain interconnect agreements anyway for phone traffic, wouldn't they?
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Doesn't the IRS charge you an extra fee if you want to pay your taxes by credit card?
Also I believe many colleges charge an extra fee if you pay tuition by credit card...
It's a terrible idea. Not only because it allows companies hurt the poor, but also because it gives them the power to shape their customers' behavior. If companies push such policies far enough, you will see things such as "good service fee" where you can pay say $20 for good customer service or $0 for crappy/no service. As history shows, many people choose cheapest option regardless, so soon enough you will see customer service disappear for most people. This is just one example why allowing companies to even think about shaping customers' behavior is bad.
This fee screws the people who can least afford it. People who pay their bill online or by phone on a one-off basis are usually the people who are struggling to pay that bill at all. By charging those folks an extra fee, Verizon basically said, "Screw the poor." To which I say, "Screw Verizon."
I think you're conflating a few things. Verizon isn't saying "screw the poor" -- they're saying, "screw those who can't maintain a budget well enough to make regular dependable payments." I'm not defending Verizon here. But if you are paying for a service that you can't guarantee you can make the payments on every month, your budget is unsustainable. That may be okay for a few months, but in the long term, you need to make changes -- whether that means changing the service or dropping it in favor of something you can afford.
(By the way, I'm speaking as someone who lived very near the poverty line for a couple years, and sometimes that meant living without various utilities or eating lots of rice and beans, but I never carried a balance on a credit card, and I never made a late payment except for one that once got crossed in the mail with another transaction.)
If Verizon wants to make this extra revenue, it will make it. And if it can't make it off of this class of customers, it will probably make it off of everyone, which means those poor people will end up paying for a significant portion anyway.
They're basically starting to act like credit card companies, and need to be dealt with in the same way that we dealt with themâ"with harsh federal regulations that punish such behavior.
Yeah, let me tell you about at least two people I know, neither of whom makes a lot of money, who were completely screwed over by those federal regulations you so prized. They had racked up debt on credit cards, but they were managing it and were paying it back responsibly. But the federal government stepped in and offered protection for the deadbeats (rich and poor) that aren't responsible and don't know how to budget.
Suddenly, my family member and my friend both experienced huge rate increases on their existing debt. (Almost everyone's rates went up to pay for the revenue the credit card companies were no longer making off of the irresponsible delinquents.) Because of that, they went from situations where they were responsibly paying back their debt every month to situations where they couldn't sustain the payments. One was lucky enough to have a family member who could bail her out; the other almost went bankrupt.
We need a safety net to protect those who end up in truly awful situations due to no fault of their own. But government intervention to protect deadbeats who can't budget will just end up screwing someone else... because ultimately, the companies will still find a way to get their profits.
Why don't all companies do this? It's genius! "We'd be glad to accept your payment, but you will pay a payment to make that payment." Maybe they could also charge for paying the payment through the payment service? Holy shit...you could get thousands of dollars out of any bill you send eventually, just by making people jump through enough hoops. BRB starting my own business.
Big nothing. So they caved on the petty fee to coerce you to auto pay and save Verizon a small amount of bookkeeping. The major injustice is the outrageous charges for wireless voice and text which uses minimum bandwidth.
Wrong. The billing infrastructure is the only thing they need to maintain with the egregious fees. The other infrastructure, agreements, etc. are already in their network, and we're paying for them somewhere else.
It's funny because *EVERYONE* else will charge you for *not* paying your bill online. Or at least make it as hard as possible, and encourage you to change your behavior every chance they get. Something about photons and electrons being faster and more precise than some mashed up piece of cellulose. It's really funny to watch all this. Myspace, bank of america, netflix, now verizon, who next? You can get away with sticky fingers when dealing with HR and the payroll robots (obviously to the tune of several figures), but real live people tend to get pissed about things like that, even if it is only $2. Which can't buy you anything, btw, but we still know not to let someone else just have it.
They'll just rename it something else that sounds vaguely government-ish and charge everyone now.
"National Gross receipts collection services fee"
Or something...
From Google Translate: "Customer feedback" --> "Internet shitstorm"
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
Sounds like Sky NZ but the main sports pack has been it own for some time there but SKY UK, FOX sports + espn australia. The good thing is you are not forced to buy sports to get movies or basic channels. In Canadian systems they have theme packs with sports being in 2-3 packs. Some systems even put wgn Chicago (the local one with more sports) in sports yes in Canadian systems you get the local WGN with all the Chicago only stuff.
What you're failing to mention is that the reason they cranked those folks' rate up is that the government gave them notice that it was their last opportunity to do so before new regs would make it harder to do exactly that. Some folks got screwed in the short term. That sucks. But in the long run, a lot more people will be saved from getting screwed over because of those rules.
More significantly, you're blaming the regulations for what the credit card companies did all on their own. Nobody held a gun to their heads and said that they had to raise their rates. They've been making record profits, and would still have made solid earnings without doing so. And they didn't even do it in a rational way; they tripled my rate to near usurious levels, and I have excellent credit and pay off all of my cards at the end of the month each month. Many credit card companies used those regulations as an excuse for why they had to arbitrarily crank nearly everyone's rate as high as the law would allow, and you bought their bullshit hook, line, and sinker.
The fact of the matter is this: companies lie. They didn't have to do it. They did it because they could. And because they don't actually care about anyone other than themselves. Unfortunately, we live in a world where the vast majority of corporations are run by sociopaths, who do whatever they think they can get away with, to the maximum extent allowable by law. As long as that is the case, it is absolutely necessary to have laws that ensure that the worst they can do is still within the realm of what is acceptable in a functioning society. Want to stop the draconian laws that make life miserable for businesses? Buy stock in a company that acts like a bunch of evil assholes, then vote all of your shares against the entire board. If enough people did this, companies would be forced to act like decent human beings. Short of that, the law is the last refuge of civility.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
My gas bill and water bill both charge fees to pay online (one is a $1.50 fee, the other is whatever Western Union charges), so I send checks. A stamp is cheaper than their fee. The stupidest one I ever had, though, was a car loan that was through CitiBank (the dealership got me a great rate: 0.9%). They only accepted payments online via Western Union. Yet, the CitiBank credit card my wife has allows us to pay online with no fees. WTF? You're the SAME DAMN COMPANY. Share the payment functionality between divisions. We paid that loan off as quickly as possible and I will be certain to never use CitiBank for a car loan, ever again.
Please don't humanize the morons around me. It makes me very uncomfortable.
got to love it. master says rape, slave says no, hits submit and master says ok won't rape now. add fee later when slave asleep. slave has to sleep, right?
It charges many of its customers $4.99 for the same, exact thing.
It's the banks and the credit card companys themselves. Apparantly, theres been a lot of complaints about cardholder fees and the like from many merchants, and its only logical that the businesses would have to pass this along to the customer in some way. Of course, the way VZW was doing it, made no sense at all, as what is diffrent about processing an auto-pay, vs. a one time payment on the back end? If they are getting gouged by the credit house or bank they are using, and have no other recourse, shouldent they raise everyones rates slightly to cover the increased cost on their end, spreading the cost out amongst all their subscribers, vs. a limited few who used the one time payment mechanism? And for the record, i use the one time payment system, mostly for the control factor. I can easily sign up for the auto pay, and while i use it for a few other services, its nice to see the bill, and have some recourse on the bill before paying it. While it dosent seem to fluxuate much, its nice to be able to review it before paying it since it can be volitile, vs. say my car or rent or whatever thats a fixed amount month by month.
But in the long run, a lot more people will be saved from getting screwed over because of those rules.
No they won't. Businesses today will just find other ways to screw people. To think otherwise is naive. Once businesses become so big and so impersonal that they don't care about individual people, it's inevitable.
More significantly, you're blaming the regulations for what the credit card companies did all on their own.
No, I'm blaming the regulations for doing a half-assed job at trying to control a free market. If you want to regulate credit card companies to the point that they can't make outrageous profits (i.e., actually limit their interest rates and profit by statute), you might get somewhere. But no business lobby will accept that. Instead, you put in a few stupid minor regulations that improve some people's lives, make others' worse, and lawmakers look like they've done something.
Many credit card companies used those regulations as an excuse for why they had to arbitrarily crank nearly everyone's rate as high as the law would allow, and you bought their bullshit hook, line, and sinker.
I haven't bought anything, but apparently you've bought into political propaganda that a little regulation is actually going to help anything in this case. The banks want to show record profits to satisfy the rest of the market and the investors, and they will find a way to do it... which is why they took advantage of this opportunity while they still had it.
The fact of the matter is this: companies lie. They didn't have to do it. They did it because they could
Who lied here?? Seriously. The rates are listed on the back of the credit card statement. Every customer agreed to a set of rules spelled out clearly in an agreement, which generally said their rates would be raised to ridiculous levels if the defaulted (and what constituted that), sometimes even if they defaulted on some other payment to some other entity. The fees were all laid out.
Are those fees "fair"? Of course not. But the customers took the credit cards, and they're responsible for the agreement. Any halfway intelligent person should have known that they were working with loan sharks at credit card companies, and if they didn't, they should have had it drilled into their heads in eighth-grade math.
The failure here is that people agree to things all the time that they don't read and don't understand. I know there were some shady things the credit card companies did, but for the situations affected by the regulations, they generally spelled out most fees, penalty rates, and such pretty clearly for customers.
I'm willing to blame our educational system for not giving these people the tools to evaluate financial risks. If there were specific circumstances where the policies weren't spelled out in the customer agreements, I agree that should be fixed.
But if you take money from a loan shark, you can't be surprised if he comes and breaks your kneecaps when you don't pay up. The problem, just like the problem with all the mortgages that went bust, is people don't understand financial math. Until they do, businesses will keep finding ways to take advantage of them -- simple as that.
But if you want to punish companies for agreements customers made, fine. Then we really need to regulate the credit card industry and force it to take much smaller profits. But that's not going to happen with the current lobbying environment.
What you're praising is the tomfoolery of a bunch of lawmakers trying to pretend they're doing something, while the credit card companies just find other ways to grab profits.
I live in New York and can't find a convenience anywhere when I need one. Uncivilized dump that it is. Why should I pay $2.00 when I can just pee anywhere. What?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
If you can just keep opening new lines of credit to pay off old ones
I'm confused; isn't this what the Federal Government does?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Ding ding, you're a winner ;)
If you want painful, check out the price of WTV.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Yes. But the agreement for text messages is separate, believe it or not. Hey, at least they're equal opportunity ripoffs - they'll scam a few extra bucks out of each other just as much as their customers.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Wrong. SMS interconnects are separately maintained from voice interconnects, SMSCs don't do anything except process SMS messages so they aren't "already on the network". Basically the only thing you can guarantee is already there is intercept infrastructure. Seriously, just get the fuck over it: SMS messages are not free to provide.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I don't pay any convenience fees, checking fees, etc. These companies lay off workers reducing their costs and then charge the consumer for those savings.
I avoid Verizon for various reasons, primarily their total lack of ethics, as both as a cellular consumer and as a telecommunications contractor.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Doesn't the IRS charge you an extra fee if you want to pay your taxes by credit card?
The IRS doesn't charge an extra fee to 'pay your taxes by credit card', because the IRS doesn't give you any option to pay your taxes by credit card.
Now, you might be able to utilize a third party service that you pay a fee to a bank by credit card, who in turn provides the payment to the IRS...
Verizon intended to charge a $.002 fee.
The confusion can be explained here http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/
As if the 'customer feedback' would ever endorse this extra fee, or any other fee...
Yeah, because city officials would never think to raid those infrastructure funds to pay for their pet projects and special pensions directly benefiting them personally, right?
"This is why credit card companies try to entice you with credit transfers to low-rate cards. This is the same as refinancing a mortgage. What it effectively does is pays off the old line of credit immediately and starts your new line of credit at the amount of the old one, with a new interest rate or whatever promotional limited time offer."
but- they don't pay off and CLOSE the old line of credit. It's not the same where it likely matters most.
when you refinance a mortgage, the old mortgage ends... when you do a credit transfer, you've got a paid off fully available line of credit in your hand...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
in the USA you can offer discount for cash ~
there is ZERO requirement that items be equitably priced for credit cards and other forms of payment.
in the UK (and elsewhere) you can charge a surcharge for using creditcards
the "pre-history" of transactions (which you have a little wrong btw) came about because of merchants advertising a certain price for an item, and then charging more when credit card customers walked in the door, without indicating in advance a slightly higher price for credit transactions. This was deemed false advertising. What is fine is printing $XXX.xx and X% discount for cash... or two wholly separate prices, so long as the text is equal in aspects or the more prohibitive price is largest,,,,,,
read up on Silo and the 299 bananas some time....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Sure, they're just going to find other ways to grab profits. The point was to ensure that they couldn't disproportionately place that burden on the backs of the people who could least afford it. As long as the regulations achieve that, then yes, I think they're useful.
As for credit cards being a free market, the reality of the matter is that it can't be. Most companies take credit cards from VISA and Mastercard. Some companies take credit cards from American Express or Discover. Beyond that, your odds start to fall to near zero fairly rapidly. This means that if you want to be a credit card company, you have to play in those companies' sandboxes.
As long as we do not have open, Internet-based standards for credit cards so that any company can opt into providing a credit card without signing on with one of those four companies, there can be no free market. Nearly all of the "competition" is just superficial competition for the right to be the front-facing identity for an oligopoly.
Most of the agreements I've gotten pretty much say that they can raise the rates at any time for any reason, up to some ludicrous amount. Most rational people, however, assume that because the company has treated them reasonably in the past, they will continue to do so. Sure, those folks arguably should have read the maximum rate, and thought to themselves, "If they crank my rate up to 27% interest, can I still afford this?", but the reality is that most people don't, and you can't reasonably expect them to do so.
Don't get me wrong; the credit card fix wasn't ideal. They should have passed a federal usury law limiting annual percentage rates to prime + 10%. That would not only prevent pretty much all of the abuse, but also would have the effect of killing all the payday loan scams that banks and check cashing centers perpetrate—schemes that prey upon the desperate who often have no real alternatives if they don't want the power company to turn off their electricity.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
it does in no way violate a visa agreement,
usa- discounts for cash are ok with all credit cards
uk (and australia I think) surcharges are allowed (and need not be mentioned any farther in advance then the business fells the need/will cost them business for lack of disclosure)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
one of my 'little plans' in life is to just say NO to scrotal irritation, minimal or not...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Yes, this was definitely a Convenience Fee. It was convenient for Verizon, not the customer.
I don't think the fee is misplaced though - just poor execution. My local utility companies allow pay by check or auto-pay for free. If you want to pay via credit card they send you to another website - who adds a processing/service charge. I use my bank bill-payment feature which results into a direct wire funds transfer and no check is actually "printed." (electronic disbursement). [always keep the power in your hands - I never use auto-deduct payments]
Several companies offer me discounts for receiving my bill online - "Go Paperless" they ask! (one of them offered $1 per month). I think Verizon could have offered everyone discounts for using the less expensive method of payment. But I'll bet that the majority pay using the cheap method - so they'd have lost money. I wonder what the profile is of somebody that uses the phone-in option? Is this another so-called tax on the poor? Are these the people who tend to pay late, or last minute? Normalized cash flow when they can charge your credit card on a known cycle?
I recently visited my doctor and while checking out was told that I had a $9 bill due (I hadn't been in a year). I thought "gosh - are there late fees?" - Nope. It costs them relatively big money to print a bill, mail it, and have it processed (I think they use a 3rd party)... so they only send out a bill when it is $10 or more. So they sat on $9 because it was too expensive to send me a bill, no late fees.
At least Verizon doesn't have the variable monthly "special" fee anymore. That allowed them to advertise "$40 / month" but charge $43-$46 instead, and the fee was vaguely labeled to sound like a government tax.
I guess the best part is that we (collectively) are able to make these companies behave. "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore"
strangely, they've never cared what name my phone is listed under. A disconnected from my real name alternate name is as good as unlisted.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
the "pre-history" of transactions (which you have a little wrong btw) came about because of merchants advertising a certain price for an item, and then charging more when credit card customers walked in the door, without indicating in advance a slightly higher price for credit transactions. This was deemed false advertising.
Well then why is not false advertising when they say it is $9.99, but when I go buy the item, they charge me almost $11 after tax?
Why is it not false advertising when the airline says a ticket will cost $200, but when I go to purchase the ticket, it cost $250 after various non-voluntary fees?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
"Smart companies stick in sneaky fees so you don't notice, dumb ones announce that they're going to charge you for the privilege of paying your bill."
but it does happen.......
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/29/travel/airfare-price-rule/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
taxes going straight to the governments collected over and above don't benefit the merchant directly...
(maybe in Florida, they get paid a comission to collect sales taxes I'm told)
further, these taxes and fees are applied to all equally, the original upset was the additional undisclosed costs were not applied evenly. the consumer protection in this case was deigned to treat all customers equally, either via education or once they had walked through the door.
There is a weird parallel in contract law (which technically, an ad is an offer of a contract to sell)
the party that generates the contract, if there is an ambiguity in the contract- is decided in favor of the party that signed...... not the contract maker....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I always thought it was more egregious for them to charge for NOT listing your number, rather than for listing it. When asked, reps always gave some lame excuse, like it costs money to flag to remove the listing entry...
Even more entertaining is that they will charge you to not list your number, but if you are a business, they will charge you to list it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You mean customers will rebel when companies start charging them extra for services that they originally rolled out to customers with the claim that the company would save money by switching to the new system?
The problem isn't just greed, it's the insulting assumption that customers are complete and utter morons who'll just give Verizon money because they say they want it. Verizon has always had shitty service any time I ever dealt with them. FFS, they couldn't even deliver a data line for a 56K modem link to Bear County in Delaware -- their codecs crunched the audio so much you could only get a 28.8 connection. And that was YEARS after most districts had DSL or cable based high-speed.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As a company that recently changed it's policy, due to a consumer backlash.
Congress better hurry and pass SOPA, before consumers on the internet get completely out of control.
Over the weekend I looked at my latest Comcast bill. They are starting, 1 Jan, a $3 fee for the privilege of giving your payment to a live customer service rep. If you drive to the office so your payment won't be late, you'll pay more.