Consumers win again: Verizon drops $2 ‘convenience fee’ plan

December 30, 2011 By Molly McHugh

After consumers struck back, Verizon decides to pull its new payment policy before it's even enacted.

In what’s turning out to be a great day for consumer causes, Verizon will drop its proposed $2 convenience fee for paying your bill online or over the phone. Yesterday an internal memo surfaced revealing the nation’s largest carrier planned instituting the new payment policy this January.

The changes were supposed to encourage customers to pay via electronic check or AutoPay, but Verizon’s subscribers had other plans. Users took to Twitter, Facebook, and Change.org to attack the plan. As a result of the immediate and furious lashing the company took, the fee has been pulled.

“Verizon Wireless has decided it will not institute the fee for online or telephone single payments that was announced earlier this week,” the company’s press release reads. “The company made the decision in response to customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions. The company continues to encourage customers to take advantage of the numerous simple and convenient payment methods it provides. ‘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,’ said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless.”

By acting quickly Verizon likely missed having a GoDaddy-sized boycott on its hands, as well as a possible FCC investigation—and once again we have the Internet to thank for giving control to consumers. Bank of America was put into a similar position (with a similar outcome: backpedaling) earlier this month when it attempted to charge users a $5 monthly fee to use their debit cards.

Showing 6 comments

Stephen LeatherFace Popa at 12:50pm 31st December 2011 well between this and bank of America we have saved our selves about 100$ a year that we would have had to pay in fee's ...horray for logical people...
Stephen LeatherFace Popa at 12:47pm 31st December 2011 Whats next, are we going to be charged to use the drive thru at mcdonalds,
Chris Gosselin at 10:39am 31st December 2011 Is there a pattern here? Are corporations inventing fees so they can then quickly get some free press when they revoke the fee and show how consumer sensitive they are? It's all too suspicious.
James Phillips at 6:37am 31st December 2011 I don't see anything morally wrong with passing credit card fees onto the consumer at least it part - after all, it's just another overhead. It's a bit crappy that the card companies don't let you charge this fee to the customer, I know I'd like to at least share it with my customers. But, if they really want to recoup the overhead they should have increased prices slightly across the board and offered a discount for paying in person or by electronic check. To be honest it's partly the fault of the banks because their online bill payment systems are too basic - you can set up a set amount to pay automatically every month, but you can't set it to pay the amount of a bill received. A lot of my customers pay their invoices with this bill payment system - I get a check in the mail from the bank and it's all free, but they actually have to go online and type in the amount to pay, which is obviously less convenient than setting up an auto card payment.
Roberto Rob Knives Nieves at 5:28am 31st December 2011 * takes a shot of vodka!
Phil Winkel at 5:16am 31st December 2011 If they were really trying to encourage people to use auto-pay, they could have offered a $2 credit or some kind of benefit for using auto-pay. Even a bunch of corporate mouth breathers should have seen that riot coming