Verizon Configures Phones So You Incur Erroenous Data Charges? (To The Tune Of $300 Million)
If you have a Verizon phone, you've probably at one point accidentally hit a button that connects you to "Get It Now" or "Mobile Web." Arg. And it's double-arg when it turns out that even if you cancel right away, you still get hit with a $1.99 1MB data charge. According to a tipster, this is totally on purpose.
A guy wrote in to Pogue's blog and said everyone at Verizon knows about these design flaws but no one will do anything about it, because it makes Verizon over $300 million a month. He said:
"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!
"Our marketing, billing, and technical departments are all aware of this. But they have failed to do anything about it-and why? Because if you get 87 million customers to pay $1.99, why stop this revenue? Customer Service might credit you if you call and complain, but this practice is just not right.
"Now, you can ask to have this feature blocked. But even then, if you one of those buttons by accident, your phone transmits data; you get a message that you cannot use the service because it's blocked–BUT you just used 0.06 kilobytes of data to get that message, so you are now charged $1.99 again!
"They have started training us reps that too many data blocks are being put on accounts now; they're actually making us take classes called Alternatives to Data Blocks. They do not want all the blocks, because 40% of Verizon's revenue now comes from data use. I just know there are millions of people out there that don't even notice this $1.99 on the bill."
Sleazy.
Verizon: How Much Do You Charge Now? [NYT] (Thanks to John!)
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Comments:
Whenever I try to hit the OK button and miss, I just hear the message, "The fingers you are using to dial are too fat. If you'd like to order a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm."
AT&T has the same situation with their GoPhones. It doesn't take anything to 'ass-dial' the center button into browsing the data-sucking graphics and ringtone store.
Verizon has obviously designed it that way as well, incorporating user error via a poor UI into a ripe profit center.
Can't you designate the up arrow as a shortcut for another function?
Seems that Verizon should institute a very small (10KB perhaps) grace allowance on the data before you get billed. Nobody actually USING data will get in under that limit.
This happened to me when I purchased the new enV phone. First, the store representative added MobileIM to my phone, which ran up a data charge. Once I got the phone home, I was trying to figure out the various keyboard functions and wound up running up a few addition data charges. I called Verizon to see if I could reassign the keys to avoid future charges and was told that it could not be done. Luckily, my old roommate also works for Verizon, so I sent him an email and he told me exactly how to resassign the data charges. Next up, I wrote an email to Verizon telling them I was not happy and would gladly let my contract expire and go to AT&T. A few days later, I received a phone call and they were more than willing to refund the charges.
Now if Verizon could tell me why my phone started downloading songs on its own and charging me $1.99 for the priviledge, while at the same time saying sorry, we can't reverse the charges because you had to agree twice to the download.
Another conspiracy? You tell me anonymous Verizon employee consumerist reader.
@TCama: Yes but most users do not know this and most phones have a special button to connect right smack in the middle of the other buttons.
@TCama: I was going to say something along these lines. Most phones allow you to re-assign these keys to different functions. My phone is kind enough to remind me that accessing the mobile browser may incur charges and makes me say it's okay before it loads it. I wonder if others do the same, or if I'm being charged even though it asks me that.
@Raekwon: AT&T charges per KB. I was just looking at the history on my mom's bills and she has been paying from 5 to 15 cents a month do to the same flaw. A much more reasonable charge.
I've had this very same problem with AT&T. There is no way to make that internet option disappear. When I told them I would be filing a complaint to the FTC because the phones are designed according to the carriers' instructions, they promised to have a supervisor call me back. Never got a call back. The only way these companies will ever change is by making fines more expensive than the amount of money they make on these unethical charges.
AT&T sends me messages titled "free tips". They look like normal text messages, but when I open them, it tried to connect me to the web and I get charged a data fee. *hatred*
@TCama: Yeah you can. Plus, before I had a data plan, my old motorola e815 (bought circa 2006) would prompt me that if I continued to the web browser or used the app store I could be charged for data usage and I never had any $1.99 fees show up on my bills.
This happened with all of my Verizon phones. Even if you call and ask for them to block internet, it's a risk for you to try it out because it probably won't work and then you're saddled with that $1.99 charge. I called to get my money back and ask them to block internet on my phone, and they said that they would do that - but I doubt it ever got fixed. I was just much more careful about that up button.
@AustinTXProgrammer: While they might consider it, they'd just arrange for the first page you load to have an 11kB image on it.
@TCama: Most phones allow you to do that. The Samsung ACH phones had icon buttons, IIRC, so changing what they did wasn't an option. And none of mine ever gave me a prompt about the data.
2 words: Class Action.
Take em down, and take em down hard.
Yet another reason why buying your own unlocked phone and being not on contract is a win.
Verizon is a giant corporation. Giant corporations are sleazy. I think its time we learn this and just start warning people rather than tautological name calling.
@Scuba Steve: You know, I absolutely despise most class action lawsuits, but in this case, I'd have to agree. This is outright fraud, plain and simple.
Blackberries FTW!
I would love to be able to pickpocket every stranger I meet for $2, and then say, "Hey, it's only two freaking dollars!"
Of course, I would go to jail. But Verizon just sails merrily along.
@Raekwon: Sprint does not charge a fee. If I happen to do anything that would start a data connection, my phone always asks if I want to connect to the Internet. I say no and no charges appear on my bill.
I'm not sure if they charge to download ringtones and such (I don't spend money on such things generally although my other half does). IIRC they don't, but I could be wrong.
I have verizon phones and have for years (Verizon is hands down the best when it comes to business phones so I have kept them with all businesses who I have any say in cell phone choice)
They have always allowed us to block this feature and once blocked we incur no charges. At my last job, I managed 150+ cell phones under verizon. About 15 of those were smartphones and had unlimited data, the rest were regular phones, we similay called, and said "block data and all extra services on all accounts except" and it was done. No data, no text, no music downloads, no games, no 3rd party billings. No problem. We then added text to a handful of them, still no problem.
I think this guy is full of crap.
This is why the FCC should mandate that the phones are made by a neutral 3rd party. Most phones are CRIPPLED in their feature sets by the phone companies.
Verizon makes Fry's look like a model of customer service excellence.
i have a verizon phone, if i try to go to mobile web, it says i have a choice of using the mobile web for 24 hours for $1.99 or going to "my verizon" for free. what is described above must be an old way of doing things.
AT&T recently just "lowered" the price of its alacarte data services. Quite considerably, but its a misleading lowering of the price because you'll get charged more off the bat than before.
Before, it was 1c per kilobyte.
Now, its $2 per megabyte.
So instead of getting a 3c charge for accidentally hitting the internet button you're now getting a $2 charge.
It is not right. HOWEVER, the couple of times I have seen a $1.99 data charge on my Verizon bill, I have e-mailed and gotten immediate credit.
Are we saying millions of customers just pay the $1.99? Now, that is plain stupid.
When I signed up with Verizon, I told them to turn off the internet features of our phones because we were not getting the unlimited data plan, and $2 per megabyte is rape. They never did it.
@Raekwon: ATT also booby traps some of the buttons and screens on the phones. Some months, when no one steps in the trap, we get no charge. Other months we've paid a few tens of cents. It's irritating mostly because I can't reprogram some of the buttons to something useful.
ATT: You didn't hear about this minimum MB charge, right? Nothing for you to see here. Just move along.
@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: It's also possible they handle this feature differently for business accounts, especially large ones.
@IndyJaws: yeah, problem is with class action, your settlement will be a $1.99 credit on your phone bill...good for 1 mistake usage =P
@Scuba Steve: Better yet, everyone sue in small claims court.
All the class would get is a couple of bucks and the right not to sue.
I remember my old Cingular flip phone did that to, BUT there was no charge for browsing the Media Net store even without a data plan.
This math just doesn't make sense. Verizon Wireless did $4.1BN in data revenue (most of which is texting revenue) last quarter. If this is right ($300MM/month), then nearly 1/4 of total data revenue, and 1/2 of non-texting data revenue, was driven by accidental button presses. That seems amazingly high.
Looking at it another way, if we assume about 30% of Verizon customers have some sort of data plan (mobile web, blackberry, etc etc), then that means that there were about 60 million Verizon customers who could in theory be hit by this fee. That's $5/month for each of them, or 2.5 incidents per month per person. That also seems amazingly high.
While I don't doubt this problem exists, it seems like the actual # of incidents (and hence the $ generated for Verizon) is way inflated.
@AustinTXProgrammer: OK, so they've got an easy revenue stream going but you want to thwart that. Yeah, they'll take that under advisement....
@Scuba Steve: There is no class action and it's not fraud. Verizon did not deceive you into purchasing a product it did give you as represented. It's knowledge of the problem is not deceptive. Its decision not to cure the problem is not deceptive. The buttons are no easier to push than any other button on the phone, it is not mis-labeled, and you can usually change the way the buttons are mapped if you're worried about it. You will probably lose this suit, hence why they said in the article, it's not illegal, just unethical.
@AustinTXProgrammer: Actually it sounds like phone companies should not be charging you to navigate their own store or menus that show you what content is available. You are basically be charged for their advertisements.
CHALLENGE.
I notice that a button gets inadvertantly pressed on my Verizon phone every once in a while, but I've never been charged a $1.99 data usage fee for a 1/2 second connection.
Maybe I'm just lucky.
@gtsports:
I came in here to say the same thing. I've been on verizon for about 6 years now and have never had a data charge on my account that I didn't explicitly agree to (by knowingly using a service that incurred data charges).
Question for you cell phone users... me not being one of you... is this a physical button or a touch screen button?
If it is physical a little epoxy glue carefully applied could prevent if from ever being depressed again.
If it is a touch screen button then my condolences. Consider looking for a phone that gives you the ability to mitigate this problem... one that is easily hacked / jail breaked...
I always wondered about this. I do not pay the bill I just send money for my share every month so I was curious if the bill payer got these erroneous charges. I often hit the button from accident or "butt-dial" to the online storefronts. Does anyone know is AT&T does the same and if any of the companies charge a data fee to access their ringtone/background/game stores?