Kelly has a conspiracy theory. She thinks that maybe–just maybe–Verizon is sending out alerts for text message and data overages at odd hours when customers might be sleeping. According to her theory, this prompts annoyed customers to opt out of overage alerts, potentially leading them to run up huge bills.

She rants:

Vetizon harassed me at 7:27 am on Sunday morning with a text alert that i had hit 1/2 of allotted text messages. They then sent the message again at 7:47 am, just as i had fallen back asleep. You know, on my one day of the week to catch up on sleep.

My phone had not sent nor received a text message since about 11pm the night before.

Verizon customer service says that there is no control over when these usage alerts get sent. None at all. And if it bothers me, my only option is to log on to My Verizon and unsubscribe from usage alerts.

I asked if an unsuspecting consumer could get these at 3 am. The answer: yes, the system is “programmatic” and Verizon has no way of controlling the time it is sent.

Why does the alert not go out within minutes of the message that triggers the warning? Verizon has no way of controlling it.

This is a highly suspect argument, and the speed with which Verizon customer service encouraged me to log on to unsubscribe entirely from overage alerts is a pretty good hint why.

Surely there has to be some consumer protection that says the alert should either be sent at the same time the user sends or receives the magic text ir call, or that the alert shouldn’t be sent in obnoxious hours when its timing is divorced from my usage.

Or it could be that the company sends these alerts out at low-traffic times for the network…but that’s no fun to complain about, now is it?

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