Verizon nickel and dime for $300 million
?Here?s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ?Get it now? or ?Mobile Web??usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have no idea what key we hit, but up pops one of these screens. The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn?t matter; they?ve told me that ANY data?even one kilobyte?is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.
?Imagine: if my one account has 1 to 3 bogus $1.99 charges per month for data that I don?t download, how much are they making from their 87 million other customers? Not a bad scheme. All by simply writing your billing algorithm to bill a full MB when even a few bits have moved.?
?The phone is designed in such a way that you can almost never avoid getting $1.99 charge on the bill. Around the OK button on a typical flip phone are the up, down, left, right arrows. If you open the flip and accidentally press the up arrow key, you see that the phone starts to connect to the web. So you hit END right away. Well, too late. You will be charged $1.99 for that 0.02 kilobytes of data. NOT COOL. I?ve had phones for years, and I sometimes do that mistake to this day, as I?m sure you have. Legal, yes; ethical, NO.
?Every month, the 87 million customers will accidentally hit that key a few times a month! That?s over $300 million per month in data revenue off a simple mistake!
Verizon: How Much Do You Charge Now?
?Imagine: if my one account has 1 to 3 bogus $1.99 charges per month for data that I don?t download, how much are they making from their 87 million other customers? Not a bad scheme. All by simply writing your billing algorithm to bill a full MB when even a few bits have moved.?
?The phone is designed in such a way that you can almost never avoid getting $1.99 charge on the bill. Around the OK button on a typical flip phone are the up, down, left, right arrows. If you open the flip and accidentally press the up arrow key, you see that the phone starts to connect to the web. So you hit END right away. Well, too late. You will be charged $1.99 for that 0.02 kilobytes of data. NOT COOL. I?ve had phones for years, and I sometimes do that mistake to this day, as I?m sure you have. Legal, yes; ethical, NO.
?Every month, the 87 million customers will accidentally hit that key a few times a month! That?s over $300 million per month in data revenue off a simple mistake!
Verizon: How Much Do You Charge Now?
Comments
The carrier fanboy wars is one of the more unusual fandom phenomena I've run across actually. Sport teams, celebrities, various companies, various technologies, cars, TV shows, movies, toys, politics, but carriers? I should not be surprised. Carriers are universally despised in the USA. It's like Stockhome syndrome or something.