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Verizon Scraps $2 Bill Payment Fee
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If you were a Verizon customer, you probably heard about the $2 fee Verizon was trying to push on people who made one-time bill payments on their accounts. I’m a Verizon FiOS customer so I wasn’t happy to hear the news that they’d be trying to juice up their profits just a little more with this ridiculous fee. It turns out a lot of people weren’t happy (surprise!) and Verizon is backtracking by scrapping plans for this $2 fee. The funny part is that the CEO stated:
“At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” Verizon CEO Dan Mead said in a statement.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that customers aren’t going to like paying fees. They especially hate paying fees when they are trying to pay you for a service you provide!
The big lesson we can all learn from this and other failed new fees, like at Bank of America, is that the Internet has given consumers a big tool against companies trying to pull these types of stunts. Twenty years ago a company could have instituted a new “convenience” fee and likely gotten away with it. You might have had a local news station do one of those “On Your Side” stories where they pointed it out but nothing was possible on such a national scale. Now, companies like Verizon and Bank of America will really hear their customers when they try something like this.
Verizon – If you want people to use automatic bill pay, try a carrot next time. People don’t like being hit with sticks.
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This was a ridiculous idea, shown by how quickly they reversed it. BOA held on for a couple of weeks before they ditched their Debit Card fee.
After BOA I have no idea how they thought they would get away with it. A fee to PAY. It’s even more stupid that you wouldn’t be charged a fee if you went to one of their stores and took up an employee’s time. The logic wasn’t there and companies are just being stupid now. Hopefully this will be the final stupid fee we see for a while…
I use “one time electronic payments” every month because there have been billing errors by Verizon in the past and I want to be sure the bill doesn’t get paid until I verify first. They always get their money at least a week before the due date.
However, in keeping with the CEO’s hope that folks will take advantage of the most efficient methods of payment, one being paper checks delivered by USPS, I am happy to oblige and will do exactly that. Hey, USPS can use the extra business.
The audacity shown by Verizon with this fee to pay scheme has me shaking my head still!
I wouldn’t care about this, except that it makes it easy to meet reward checking account debit requirements.
I can understand if maybe they were trying to push people to use their autopay service where they just pull the money from your CC or bank, but I heard that this was going to effect their autopay customers too. They already have my credit card info so they can charge me once a month. This fee was going to be pure profit for them.
Now we just need to get them to get rid of paying for text messages once you have a data plan. I can download an almost unlimited amount of things on my phone, but I still have to pay an additional $20 for 160 character text messages. Thats crazy to me.
Verison even considering that this fee was either economically correct or acceptable was absolutely ridiculous. Somebody there needs a ‘Gibbs smack’ on the back of the head!
A complete embarrassment for Verizon!