Verizon Wireless will soon make some customers pay for the privilege of paying their bills.
The nation’s largest wireless company is instituting a $2 “convenience charge” for those customers who make one-time bill payments either online or by telephone. The fee will go into effect on Jan. 15.
“The fee will help allow us to continue to support these single bill payment options … and is designed to address costs incurred by us for only those customers who choose to make single bill payments,” the company said in a statement.
There are three ways for customers to avoid the charge: Customers can make a one-time payment using an electronic check, they can pay their bill using their home banking accounts, such as Citibank Online, or they can use a Verizon gift card or rebate card. Otherwise, single telephone and online payments will incur a $2 fee.
Customers can still enroll in a service that will debit their bank accounts or charge their credit cards on a recurring basis for free. They can also show up at a Verizon store to pay without incurring the fee, and they can mail checks to the company.
Verizon’s “convenience charge” was announced at the end of a year in which banks were vilified for charging customers a fee for using their debit cards. The banks claimed that the fees were necessary because new regulations would limit how much revenue they could make on the cards: New rules that went into effect in September capped the fees banks could charge retailers when customers swipe their debit cards.
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6 Responses
VERIZON HAS THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE WORLD. THEY COULD CARE LESS ABOUT THE CUSTOMERS. WHY SHOULD THEY NO ONE WILL LEAVE THEM ANYWAY. I DID AND IT’S BEEN BLISS.
Do the math, if 10 million customers sign up for this stupid fee, it nets them an additional 20 million a month. What a chevrah ganovim they are. Stick with the pre paid flat fee and you stay ahead of the game while still utilizing Verizons quailty without their inflated fees.
Page Plus Cellular is the way to go!!!!!!
I look forward to Charles Schumer calling for this practice to be outlawed.
The banks lowered their fees to the retailers, online is automatic and saves them additional money, and yet they want to charge for the privilege. They’ve been pushing people to pay online for years.
They have 100 million customers, and this is a way to generate millions of dollars straight to their bottom line.
Guess, we can still write checks and send em the old fashioned way, by mail, though it will cost verizon more, to process all those checks, by paying the workers to handle it.
I’m not worried about this case. The greenies are gonna flip out so bad that verizon is encouraging people to use the ungreen option of sending bills in the mail when a much cheaper greener option exists.
Anyone want take bets on the exact day they change their mind?
“Guess, we can still write checks and send em the old fashioned way, by mail, though it will cost verizon more, to process all those checks, by paying the workers to handle it”
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Verizon also will pay for printing our bills, for envelopes and postage to mail it out. They try to cut all these expenses and on a top of it they want to collect additonal money by charging customers “convenience (for Verizon) charge”.