Skip to main content

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

verizonIn 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. 

Editors' Recommendations

Molly McHugh
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…
Verizon’s cheapest 5G unlimited plan just got even cheaper
Verizon banner splashed across iPhone screen.

Verizon is one of the top service providers in the world, and now it's sweetening the deal on its cheapest unlimited 5G plan. Currently, Verizon offers a handful of different service options, with the Welcome Unlimited plan being its cheapest.

An end-of-the-year deal, however, is reducing the price of the Welcome Unlimited plan even further by $5 per month per line — making it one of the cheapest unlimited 5G plans on the market.

Read more
The best 5G phone plans in 2022
Cell tower FM radio

There's no doubt that 5G access has come a long way in the past couple of years or so, allowing for faster speeds across the board. All three of the major U.S. carriers now offer nationwide networks, and all include 5G support in their main plans and some of them have prepaid 5G phone plans.

Given the fact that all of the carriers offer 5G coverage in their plans, you might be wondering which offers the best 5G plans. From AT&T, to T-Mobile, to Verizon, all plans have their pros and cons. Here's everything you need to know.
AT&T 5G Phone plans

Read more
T-Mobile’s 5G Ultra Capacity network has four times the coverage of Verizon and AT&T
T-Mobile smartphone.

Last week, a report from Ookla revealed that T-Mobile's 5G and 4G LTE networks are nearly twice as fast as those of Verizon and AT&T. Today, Opensignal released the results of a new study that reveals one of the most significant reasons for T-Mobile's lead.

5G services cover a much wider range of frequencies than older cellular technologies, each with unique advantages and disadvantages. Since low-band 5G frequencies have considerably more range than higher frequencies and generally share the same airwaves as 4G/LTE services, all three carriers have leveraged this spectrum to provide their extended nationwide coverage. T-Mobile calls this its 5G Extended Range network, Verizon uses the term 5G Nationwide, and AT&T just calls it 5G.

Read more