In the second big move to squeeze more money out of its subscribers, Verizon today announced that it will begin charging a $30 fee to everyone who activates a new device with a two-year contract. Verizon claims that this fee will help to “continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect which includes Wireless Workshops, online educational tools, and consultations with experts who provide guidance on devices that are more sophisticated than ever.” Basically, they are now charging $15 a year for educational services. We would get all uppity about this move, except for the sad fact that the other three wireless carriers are already charging a similar crappy, rather unfair fee, especially considering that the cost of devices is already built into monthly service charges. If you choose to activate a phone without purchasing it through Verizon at a discounted rate, you will not be charged, supposedly.
That’s this week. The Verizon greed story last week was related to high-speed Internet. On May 6, anyone who wants Verizon high-speed Internet will also be forced to purchase a landline phone plan as well. There’s no good technical reason for this. It’s solely for Verizon to make up losses from people dumping their landline phones (probably because they have cell phones through Verizon Wireless). Current users who want to update or upgrade their accounts will also be forced to buy a landline phone. Not cool, Verizon. What the hell will I do with a landline phone? It can’t even make long distance calls without charges.
Before that, around New Year’s, Verizon tried to get away with charging users a $2 fee for paying their bills online or over the phone. After an uprising of negativity on the Web, Verizon abandoned that plan.
For those wondering if Verizon is actually hurting for cash, it made more than $2.5 billion in profit in 2010 and more last year.
What stunt will Verizon pull next? We’ll find out soon enough.
Putting out ads every month of upgrading to a new phone everybody just HAS TO HAVE for an amazing deal then punish your customers for taking advantage of your marketing plan? I don’t get it
My two year contract came up a couple of months back. Looking into another carrier that doesn’t “shotgun marry me” to them: i.e. No Contract “Month-to-Month” Plans. I’m month to month now so …
Far cheaper, same or almost same services, no funky surcharges, etc. I will be checking all the other carriers that I see posted in the comments below.
Ting is a favorite of mine. They’re honest, no contract.
Thanks, Jeffery. I’ll check them out. This is a serious pain. All I did for about 4 or 5 hour last night is read, read, read, research … but I have come up with a couple decent alternatives.
Nice. Maybe we’ll write an article to help out people in your situation. Did you find anything that we should look into?
Naw, not anything or any third party service you don’t already know about. I was leaning towards Boost but their coverage leaves a LOT to be desired.
I did check out Ting. I went over their very simple to understand website and plans. I did have one question that I posted in their forums and a user answered it for me the next day. I’m sold on them. It’s just a matter of buying a phone and signing up. The plan I need is less than $23 a month plus state/fed taxes. The only drawback (if you can call it that) is that I have to buy my own phone. They also don’t have any low end phones to choose from. They’re all smart phones. Not the latest and the greatest but last years models suit me just fine as I won’t be needing or using all the features anyway. Even though I’ll be paying almost $500 for that phone (buying it for the WiFi hot spot and 4G capabilities) it’ll pay for itself in about 8 months from the savings alone. As it is I’m paying more than $85/month for the “service” at Verizon and I’ll get the same service/freebies/features for more than $60 less per month. Since I’m on a month to month anyway it’ll be money very well spent even though I have to come up with it now, which isn’t a problem. They do have phones as low as $70, too. This site, company and services seem to rock! Thank you for the tip! I don’t know why Ting didn’t come up in any of my Google searches but I’m glad your blog did!
… excuse me. I meant your article, not blog :OP
Ting is a newer service, so it probably doesn’t have a ton of Google juice yet. Good thing about them is if you come up short on your minutes or data, they will refund you too. Not bad. Yeah, they are both lacking in premium high quality phones and low-end phones. Should improve with time. Good thing is that you aren’t paying for that phone in your bill every month. Boost is good in many cities, but I’m not sure how well it extends into more rural areas. Scattered.
Check out the reasons for there surcharges! Can this be legal? Contact your state public service commision &
Write to your state reps, Just do it! Verizon will love it!
Verizon lost my account when my contracts are up.. This is the straw that broke the camels back..
So glad I am switching to republicwireless.com once it is up and running.
Someone will need to break down to me why people use verizon? it sounds like the most expensive phone plan ever. I have had sprint for 10 years, the costs have always been reasonable and my service is always been unlimitted.
You get good service and I’ve always had okay customer service at their main brick and mortar stores. It’s convenient and nice to deal with someone face to face (read: they can’t and won’t B.S. me to my face) but convenience is very pricey
Thank god I switched to MetroPCS.
It used to be that I got a free phone with them every two years. Now I have to pay?
I wont be renewing with them… because not everybody is doing it…
fU verizon
AT&T raised theirs a few months ago from $18 to $36 so this really shouldn’t be a shock to anyone!
Just because one company does something, doesn’t make it perfectly awesome for everyone else to follow suit. AT&T shouldn’t have raised that rate either…or had a charge there to begin with. Ugh. Carriers…
So does this mean they will take the early termination fees away? seriously, they are going to charge you $30 to sign a new contract with them?!?!?! Holy crap! How stupid is that! “we will charge you for the privilege of signing a contract with us”.
I really want to read a justification on this charge. and not the stupid “educational options” that no one will take advantage of. Time to go to the District Attorney’s office.
/Facepalm
Not exactly. If you decide to renew your contract and keep your phone they won’t charge this fee. The fee only applies when you buy a new subsidized phone. Of course this means Verizon has done a complete 180 in a little over a year. They used to offer a discount to upgrade with the new every two promotion. Now they charge you to upgrade.
All these fees, higher ETF charges, and absurdly expensive monthly plans have pushed me to prepaid. I’d rather spend $550 on a new unlocked phone and pay $25 a month less for service with no contract. It allows me to get a new phone every year and still come out ahead. I’ll never sign another phone contract.
Ok. Well, then if this is a $30 charge, why wouldn’t they just increase the subsidized price of the phones by $30 and not call it a charge? Heck, they wouldn’t even need to tell anyone. It just makes no sense…
They don’t want to raise the price of phones because it could potentially scare away new customers. The goal of this is to grab a pile of cash from existing customers that aren’t going to leave regardless.
Unfortunately for them, this is just another reason for me to leave when my contact is up in a few months and Im sure several other customers feel the same way. I doubt it’ll make too much of a dent in regards to customers leaving, but either way, it’s nonsense.
I’m sure they anticipate losing some customers over this, but not enough to offset the amount of money they’ll make on this fee. Unfortunately for people in bad service areas it’s Verizon or nothing. For more fortunate people in good service areas they can simply bounce between carriers every two years now that numbers can be easily ported. But like I said earlier it’s cheaper to buy a phone outright and use prepaid service.
Yup, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Ditching the contract and grabbing an unlocked (probably iPhone) phone with a pre-paid plan.
If you haven’t seen it before, check out the Straight Talk unlimited everything prepaid plan. It’s only $45 a month. I’ve read a lot of negative reviews, but they seem to be related to the previous practice of buying a phone from them and taking the SIM out of it. They now sell SIM cards for $15 and recent reviews suggest they’ve loosened or removed the data caps. They use AT&T towers so you get identical speeds for much less money.
Thanks for the info, I hadn’t looked into them yet. As of right now, I’m thinking of going with T-Mobile’s pre-paid plan but 4 months from now, who knows…
I have the $30 T-mobile plan with 100 minutes, unlimited texts and 5GB of data. It’s an amazing value for somebody like me that doesn’t need a lot of minutes. Unfortunately T-mobile coverage in my area sucks so I’m about to switch to Straight Talk. I’m willing to pay the extra $15 a month for significantly better coverage. And of course the beauty is I can switch at will without paying an ETF.
Yeah that’s my plan. I can’t wait to have the freedom to switch my plan every month if something better comes out :)
Looks like it’s time to put in for my 20% a month discount. I never used that card, knowing it was always an option. But I guess it’s time to use it.
i never thought of it that way. thanks for the heads up, when my current contract expires i will be doing just as you pointed out!
I’m right there with you, JAKEP, except I’ll be paying more like a hundred dollars less …