Phones can be purchased for around $20, but over half a million mostly older Americans still send the phone companies between $4.45 and $19.95 each month for a rented phone. Many senior citizens mistakenly believe that their rented phones are a great deal. From Bankrate:
telecom
"Automatic Bill Payment" Means Verizon Pays Your Bill, Then Sends You Another One
By 7.3.07
Just when you think you’ve head everything, Rebecca writes you. She thought she’d set up her Verizon DSL with automatic payments. When she could suddenly no longer log in to her Verizon email, she called them up and found out that she was way overdue. Once she paid her past balance, and waited several days for Verizon to turn her service back on, she logged in to her account and sure enough she did have automatic payments set up:
