Verizon To Charge $2 To Pay Your Bill

qbanb8582 said:
The fees are somewhat legit. If your bill is $50 and you pay them cash or check $50 they get all of that $50.

Where is if you pay $50 with a credit or debit card they net about $45 or so. Because they're charged a transaction fee and then also a percentage of the transaction amount.
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forgive me but it's not like $45 they will get, it's $49.37 of that $50 paid. reason i know this is cause i work for one of this companies and handle this things.
 
scbjmshpv said:
forgive me but it's not like $45 they will get, it's $49.37 of that $50 paid. reason i know this is cause i work for one of this companies and handle this things.
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Ok the numbers was just an example not a real concrete number that is charged per transaction.
 
qbanb8582 said:
Ok the numbers was just an example not a real concrete number that is charged per transaction.
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I personally have a friend who works for one of the major payment processing companies, she said a company like Verizon is like Walmart in terms of leverage power and negotiating rates. Any of the big companies would be willing to nearly give it away on a per-payment level in order to keep their business. They don't need $2 from each customer to cover that, even with the new laws that went into effect.
 
MikeTrike said:
I can understand over the phone, because you have to pay a person to be on the other end of that phone. But online with all of the automation is a bit of a stretch.
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No. Stop making excuses for companies. Your monthly bill is supposed to cover their operating costs and profits. For example, I went looking at new cars online the other day, and once you click on the car you want there is all of a sudden a 1600 dollar "transportation fee" tacked on. This is apparently what it costs the dealer to get the vehicle from the factory. The factory and the dealer are the same company, that is just their cost of doing business, but they try to pass it off on the customer. What's next? Heating bill fee? The staff all went out for lunch today fee?
 
josephclemente said:
Did you talk to their legal department yet? I am interested in knowing if this is breach of contract as well.
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so according to their terms

Can Verizon Wireless Change This Agreement or My Service?
We may change prices or any other term of your Service or this agreement at any time,but we'll provide notice first, including written notice if you have Postpay Service. If you use your Service after the change takes effect, that means you're accepting the change. If you're a Postpay customer and a change to your Plan or this agreement has a material adverse effect on you, you can cancel the line of Service that has been affected within 60 days of receiving the notice with no Early Termination Fee.
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But because they are giving you options to pay that can also cover those who cannot get out of the house (like disabled people), you can't make a case for a Material Adverse Effect.
 
WorldExclusive said:
People still use contract cellphones? Wow.
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I recently bought a busted T-Mobile G2 from Ebay. Had to replace the digitizer and earpiece speaker.

G2 = $50
Digitizer = $20
Earpiece speaker = $4

This phone keeps up very well with modern phones in Quadrant, and cost me less then most new Android phones. I'm under contract, but I see no reason to be if I can do this.
 
If anyone's to blame for this horseshit, it's the credit card companies and the greedy banks, not Verizon. Don't get me wrong, I hate Verizon with a passion! However, they are simply trying to recover billions of dollars of lost revenue from credit card processing fees. Assuming that most individuals pay $100+ a month for Verizon's service, they are losing approximately 3-5% per transaction. Multiply that by millions of transactions and you see why they are trying to get customers to switch to ACH. ACH transfers are easy to use and don't cost the merchant anything. Not to mention, when a stolen credit card is used for purchases or payments, Verizon ends up eating the loss and charge back fees.

So yeah, if you want to stop this trend of bullshit CC charges, stop using them...
 
This is a HUGE CORPORATION which profits millions, trying to pass of a piece of their business costs onto customers (which is paid by any normal business without QUESTION, never the customers!)

This is patheticly sad and greedy for Verizon to do this. Not only are their plans the most overpriced just about, you get completely ripped by Verizon if you don't know anything about tech. My grandma is one of their victims.... I saw her bill and these companies really "upsell" shit the people never use, EVER!
 
OregonLAN said:
If anyone's to blame for this horseshit, it's the credit card companies and the greedy banks, not Verizon. Don't get me wrong, I hate Verizon with a passion! However, they are simply trying to recover billions of dollars of lost revenue from credit card processing fees. Assuming that most individuals pay $100+ a month for Verizon's service, they are losing approximately 3-5% per transaction. Multiply that by millions of transactions and you see why they are trying to get customers to switch to ACH. ACH transfers are easy to use and don't cost the merchant anything. Not to mention, when a stolen credit card is used for purchases or payments, Verizon ends up eating the loss and charge back fees.

So yeah, if you want to stop this trend of bullshit CC charges, stop using them...
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They should give big companies like verizon a break, or give them X amount of credit card purchases per month for $X amount of dollars. The more, the better deal it is..... I mean, wtf... do business, not pass expenses of your business onto the customer.

THis is like comcast forcing local counties, and customers to pay for fiber optic lines in the places and cities they want.... WTF, they are going to profit BILLIONS off of all this, why are they being so greedy? Same thing goes with wireless... they keeping trying to tack on this and that, yet are profitting billions every year, on top of making wireless CRAPPIER in performance...... wtf, use some of that grredy profit and upgrade our countries infrastructure before we have to import faster bandwidth from Canada or something! (wouldn't be 1 bit surprised, to be honest)
 
no, this is all Verizon's decision and responsibility. They're just being greedy. Their billing system is already fucked beyond belief with no recourse. Due to that fact alone I will never get Fios.

I guarantee you... if someone pushes this to a state AG, you'll be able to get out of your contract.
 
Yeah online payments are so difficult you should be charged for it herp derp.
 
It seems like Verizon went about this the wrong way. They should have quietly began to raise their base rate by $3 and then implemented a preferred customer appreciation discount of $2 for those who use autopay or billpay.

Instead of outrage over a greedy "fee" people would feel like Verizon was in touch with customer's modern lifestyles.
 
Bootleg Usher said:
No. Stop making excuses for companies. Your monthly bill is supposed to cover their operating costs and profits. For example, I went looking at new cars online the other day, and once you click on the car you want there is all of a sudden a 1600 dollar "transportation fee" tacked on. This is apparently what it costs the dealer to get the vehicle from the factory. The factory and the dealer are the same company, that is just their cost of doing business, but they try to pass it off on the customer. What's next? Heating bill fee? The staff all went out for lunch today fee?
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Guess you don't know how car dealerships work then. They're more like franchises than an arm of a car manufacturing company.
 
swimming pool said:
It seems like Verizon went about this the wrong way. They should have quietly began to raise their base rate by $3 and then implemented a preferred customer appreciation discount of $2 for those who use autopay or billpay.

Instead of outrage over a greedy "fee" people would feel like Verizon was in touch with customer's modern lifestyles.
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That's just making them sound worse, honestly.
 
I hope this doesnt spread to Sprint, but I have a strong feeling this will backfire and be reversed.
We need to get some of this outrage re-directed to text messaging charges ;)
 
nsx241 said:
Misleading headline and summary. FTA - this is for one-time payments. If you're like me, and already have your bills set on recurring payments with your credit card or bank account, you aren't affected, so it isn't quite as bad as it may seem.

Still a dick move by Verizon though. No doubt AT&T and Sprint will follow suit.
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If you are stupid enough to allow VZ to take money from your account, I guess it's worth it not paying a fee? :rolleyes:

Personally, I think it's stupid. The extra's and charges is why I will never use Verizon again. I think Simple Mobile is the best, its one payment, no taxes and crap added above what they tell you it costs and you have unlimited un-tiered service.
 
When they do something like my Garbage/Water bill and charge a fee for any way you pay your bill then I'll be outraged. Do you have similar outrage for other places that do similar? For example, my landlord charges $40 for paying rent with Credit, My car note charges if you call to pay, both want you to do e-check instead, so no biggie.
 
OregonLAN said:
If anyone's to blame for this horseshit, it's the credit card companies and the greedy banks, not Verizon. Don't get me wrong, I hate Verizon with a passion! However, they are simply trying to recover billions of dollars of lost revenue from credit card processing fees. Assuming that most individuals pay $100+ a month for Verizon's service, they are losing approximately 3-5% per transaction. Multiply that by millions of transactions and you see why they are trying to get customers to switch to ACH. ACH transfers are easy to use and don't cost the merchant anything. Not to mention, when a stolen credit card is used for purchases or payments, Verizon ends up eating the loss and charge back fees.

So yeah, if you want to stop this trend of bullshit CC charges, stop using them...
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I'm sorry, but I can't see it that way. If I can pay the rest of my bills without a $2 convenience fee, then why should Verizon be any different? Two dollars isn't a lot of money, but it's more of a slap in the face sort of thing. Still doesn't explain why auto is cheaper then manually paying your bill online.

It's pretty clear that cell phone companies are getting away with a lot of bullshit. Overpriced cell phones, unnecessary fees, charging us for text messages when they're really free for them. This shit list keeps going on.

If you're paying $100+ for a single cell phone, then you know there's something wrong.

$100+ for a cell phone service
$200+ for a smart phone
2 year contract
Unlimited data isn't unlimited
Carrier IQ
$150+ to disconnect under contract

Do we really need all that just to have a phone? If I could I would just use Wifi on my phone, and talk to people through VOIP. Something like Skype. Unfortunately Wifi isn't that freely available.
 
Bootleg Usher said:
No. Stop making excuses for companies. Your monthly bill is supposed to cover their operating costs and profits. For example, I went looking at new cars online the other day, and once you click on the car you want there is all of a sudden a 1600 dollar "transportation fee" tacked on. This is apparently what it costs the dealer to get the vehicle from the factory. The factory and the dealer are the same company, that is just their cost of doing business, but they try to pass it off on the customer. What's next? Heating bill fee? The staff all went out for lunch today fee?
Click to expand...

Have to disagree here. The dealer and the factory are not (usually) the same company. The factory sells to the dealers (or in many cases forces the dealers to buy a certain number of units yearly if they want to remain dealers.) often regardless of dealer size, so if they have to pay interest on hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock, this comes out of the dealers pocket until they sell that item.)

The reason the dealer charges you the shipping cost, is because most dealers are only making 8-12% profit on a sale after you account for all the fees associated with selling product, paying salesmen, paying interest/flooring/bank. Worked for a dealer whose factory that started charging shipping to ship its product a few years back, and the cost of shipping in most cases would account for 25-50% of the item cost, hundreds of dollars per unit. Was rare to get a product shipped for free.

This was not a cost that could be eaten by the dealer, and as such the cost of the item skyrocketed and everyone lost out. Dealers made fewer sales, and factories made fewer (non forced) sales because customers were less interested in buying. It couldnt be absorbed as a cost of doing business, which is why the factory started 'passing on the savings' to the dealer in the first place. No one likes these costs, especially not the dealers who have to pay em up front for every unit ordered, whether or not they will sell that item for 6 months, or years afterwords.

But to get more on topic, fees being charged to pay your bill online are nowhere near the same thing. Yes creditcard companies charge 3-5% every time you use a creditcard unless you are an incredibly high volume dealer, then it can be as low as a percentage point or two. But nearly all companies absorb this as a cost of doing business, it allows customers who dont have the cash at that immediate time to buy items that they may want or need in the first place which would otherwise be lost sales or cost the company money to manually process. Thats why companies take creditcard sales in the first place, because its a money maker for them. Tacking on convenience fees is just a way of raking the customer over the coals. Especially in the digitial age where nearly everything is paid by credit in one form or another.
 
qbanb8582 said:
The fees are somewhat legit. If your bill is $50 and you pay them cash or check $50 they get all of that $50.

Where is if you pay $50 with a credit or debit card they net about $45 or so. Because they're charged a transaction fee and then also a percentage of the transaction amount.
Click to expand...

Not to nitpick, but this isn't true. Your first statement is that cash and checks net 100% of their value - this is untrue. To receive cash, an employee has to be paid to take such payments. To take a check, even by mail, requires processing costs associated with opening envelopes, scanning checks, endorsing them, etc. Most companies like Verizon operate huge expensive machines that automate these processes to a degree, but it's hardly costless.

Your latter point is largely correct, although the values are a little dramatic. American Express is by all reports the most expensive card for merchants to take, and the fees work out to be less than 3% generally I believe.

This is just a cash grab from Verizon. Or, from an apologist perspective, a way to keep prices the same while increasing costs on the customers that incur the most cost.

Is it reasonable, given the many other ways you can pay? Sure. Will it make people mad as hell? You bet your ass it will.
 
swimming pool said:
It seems like Verizon went about this the wrong way. They should have quietly began to raise their base rate by $3 and then implemented a preferred customer appreciation discount of $2 for those who use autopay or billpay.

Instead of outrage over a greedy "fee" people would feel like Verizon was in touch with customer's modern lifestyles.
Click to expand...

this +1

The company I work for recently announced they are instituting a smokers tax to our health insurance rates.

What I told them was they should focus on the delivery of the message. No matter how it is said it's going to happen so there's no need to add insult to injury.

I told them. "Don't tell the few smokers you are going to penalize them. That is a negative message. Tell the employees that they are going to reward people for healthy lifestyle choices by giving them a $25 monthly discount on their rates, with one of the exclusions being a smoker. Then raise rates $25/mo across the board at the same time. "

It's all in the delivery. People have historically been fine with the same negative end result as long as you present it in a favorable way.

Our HR dept is a failure. They went ahead and were as harsh as possible and said. "If you smoke you are going to be penalized." and they got a lot of pissed off employees, even ones that didn't smoke, because all they heard as an aggressive negative company who was out to make things worse on their employees.
 
Aphex242 said:
Not to nitpick, but this isn't true. Your first statement is that cash and checks net 100% of their value - this is untrue. To receive cash, an employee has to be paid to take such payments. To take a check, even by mail, requires processing costs associated with opening envelopes, scanning checks, endorsing them, etc. Most companies like Verizon operate huge expensive machines that automate these processes to a degree, but it's hardly costless.

Your latter point is largely correct, although the values are a little dramatic. American Express is by all reports the most expensive card for merchants to take, and the fees work out to be less than 3% generally I believe.

This is just a cash grab from Verizon. Or, from an apologist perspective, a way to keep prices the same while increasing costs on the customers that incur the most cost.

Is it reasonable, given the many other ways you can pay? Sure. Will it make people mad as hell? You bet your ass it will.
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Yes I know those values are not exact, I just used it as an example obviously it wouldn't be that high percentage or theres no way they would do it. But what people aren't seeing is that there alot of companies that do this.

If I pay any utility bill online theres a $1.50-$2 fee on it.Maybe thats why I'm not as sensitive about it and realize I'll just pay check for it.
 
qbanb8582 said:
The fees are somewhat legit. If your bill is $50 and you pay them cash or check $50 they get all of that $50.

Where is if you pay $50 with a credit or debit card they net about $45 or so. Because they're charged a transaction fee and then also a percentage of the transaction amount.
Click to expand...

no it's not legit to do that. You are not allow to pass on your fees to your customer it's against credit card polices. Go and read the users agreement when your sign up with merchant service provider. You are not allow to pass your transaction or percentage fees to your customers, you will lose your privilege to use their service.


If the fee is for something else than i guess it's okay, but it can't be for transactions.
 
zerorhythm said:
no it's not legit to do that. You are not allow to pass on your fees to your customer it's against credit card polices. Go and read the users agreement when your sign up with merchant service provider. You are not allow to pass your transaction or percentage fees to your customers, you will lose your privilege to use their service.


If the fee is for something else than i guess it's okay, but it can't be for transactions.
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I know they're not allowed to pass on the fees, but companies still do it. As I've stated before where I live all the utility companies charge the customer a $1.50 - $2 when that person pays online with a debit or credit card.

I was kinda playing devils advocate more so then justifying it.
 
qbanb8582 said:
The fees are somewhat legit. If your bill is $50 and you pay them cash or check $50 they get all of that $50.

Where is if you pay $50 with a credit or debit card they net about $45 or so. Because they're charged a transaction fee and then also a percentage of the transaction amount.
Click to expand...

I believe most credit card vendors don't allow businesses to charge extra for using your card, curious why Verizon is allowed to do this at all honestly.
 
Holy cow, that was quick! Hopefully a FCC investigations gets Verizon reverse this lame policy. Rumor has it that Verizon is already talking about scrapping the fee after a wave of negative customer feedback.

Verizon's method for motivating customers to pay up -- in the form of a $2 convenience fee -- isn't sitting so well with consumers, or the FCC. A Federal Communications Commission official confirmed that the fee hasn't gone unnoticed, saying "on behalf of American consumers, we're concerned about Verizon's actions and are looking into the matter."
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if you pay on line your more likely to see billing errors
if you do auto pay chances are you wont see them
 
Elios said:
If you pay on line you're more likely to see billing errors that you can see yourself before paying and can question in advance

If you do auto pay chances are you wont see them which means if they make a mistake and you don't catch it they get to steal your cash and you will have to fight to get it back "next billing cycle".
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fixed for you:D
 
The County Tax Collector here charges a "convenience fee" if you use your plastic for ANYTHING there, no matter the amount. Renew your Florida ID, drivers license or vehicle registration through their website, bam, hit with a friggin' fee to use plastic. Taco Bell here charges like $0.75 fee to use plastic there, I believe no matter the amount. Some smaller places charge a similar fee for plastic transactions <$10 or so. Can't call it a "surcharge" but can call it a "convenience fee." Gotta love it.

Those who are old enough (sorry young grasshoppers) to remember the ginormous 1980-1990's editions of the Computer Shopper will remember that way before the internet, a lot of those mail order/phone order places would have in the fine print, "Prices reflect 3% cash discount" or the like, which was the early form of a "surcharge" or "convenience fee." They got away with that for years and years. Anyone else remember that?
 
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