That brand new smartphone you want to buy may not be running the latest version of Android, reports Wired, and the manufacturer or cellular provider might like it that way. It costs money to push updates out to existing customers, assuming the hardware is compatible. Besides, carriers can charge extra fees for add-on services (like turn-by-turn navigation) that newer Android OS versions include free of charge. Check out Wired’s article for a comparison chart of the Android version on each handset. [More]
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Cable Companies To Government: Make The Mean Old Media Companies Stop Pulling Channels
By 3.10.10
Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, and Verizon all want the FCC to force the media companies to stop pulling their channels during negotiations or disputes, removing their main bargaining chip from the table. [More]
Your Dying Words Better Be Your PIN, Or Verizon Will Bill Your Corpse
By 3.5.10
Don’t become too preoccupied with raging against the dying of the light — you have to remember to tell your PIN to someone before you die or Verizon will never stop billing your corpse. [More]
Impossible To Fix Address Problem Prevents You From Giving Money To Verizon FiOS
By 2.26.10
Reader Lindsay wants to give money to Verizon FiOS because she likes the product so very much. Sadly, there’s some sort of glitch with her address and Verizon won’t fix it, or call her back, no matter how many times she calls. [More]
New Report Says AT&T's 3G Network Is Fastest
By 2.25.10
Here’s the latest in the “my phone is better than your phone” war. A new test of upload and download speeds on 3G networks in 13 cities has AT&T coming out on top by a large margin over Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Someone cue the next round of Luke Wilson commercials… [More]
Verizon Didn't Know Difference Between $.002 and $.00002
By 2.23.10
Who’s in charge, the masters or the machines? You’ll be wondering the same thing after you listen to this iconic gem from The Consumerist archive, the infamous Verizon Can’t Do Math call, which we reposting because the original video got deleted and the posts were kind of scattered. In it, George recorded his attempts to get Verizon to explain why they said they would charge .002 cents/kbfor data roaming, and then billed him for .002 dollars/kb, a difference of about $76. Problem is, no one at Verizon can do math. [More]
Verizon Not Charging Soldiers For Mobile Calls From Haiti To U.S.
By 2.20.10
Verizon Wireless now says that the astronomical bills some customers received after making cell phone calls from Haiti shortly after the catastrophic earthquake there last month were due to a computer glitch. According to the Fayetteville Observer, mobile calls placed in Haiti showed up in their system as being placed in Jamaica. Calls from Haiti to the United States should have been free all along, and Spc. James Crawford does not owe Verizon almost $2,000 for phone calls he placed to his pregnant wife back in North Carolina. [More]
I Got Verizon To Fix My Internet With An Executive E-Mail Carpet Bomb
By 2.19.10
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: A well-executed Executive E-Mail Carpet Bomb is your best bet when you’ve exhausted all the regular customer service avenues. In this latest example, Serena tells Consumerist how, after weeks of phone calls, missed appointments and general hair-pulling and screaming at walls, she employed a strongly worded EECB that had Verizon out to fix her Internet connection the next day. [More]
Did You Make Calls From Haiti On Verizon? Better Start Saving.
By 2.19.10
Update: Verizon won’t charge the soldiers for the calls in question.
In the weeks immediately following the Haiti earthquake, Verizon and AT&T offered free calls to Haiti as a goodwill gesture to people in the U.S. with family and friends over there. The offers weren’t identical, though, and Verizon was only offering free calls made to Haiti, not the reverse. Spc. James Crawford kept calling his pregnant wife each day from his station in Port-au-Prince, and now they have a phone bill for $1,919.44.
Verizon & Sprint's Sales Tips For Killing iPhone, Circa 2007
By 2.19.10
Let’s step into a time machine and travel through the mists of chronos to an ancient yesteryear. It was a different era, Britney Spears shaved her head, Boris Yeltsin died, and people learned how to print images on toast from the comfort of their own workshops. Oh, and a lil’ thing called an iPhone came out. The year was 2007, and Verizon and Sprint were so scared that they issued these ridiculous sheets to their frontline reps with talking points for discouraging people from buying an iPhone: [More]
FiOS: Lock In A $20 Per Month Price Increase With A Two Year Contract! Huh?
By 2.17.10
Our buddies over at the CR Money Blog noticed something odd about a new offer from Verizon. You can get FiOS for $89.00 for a year! Sounds good, until you realize that the prices goes up after 12 months– but the contract doesn’t end for another year. [More]
Google Creates Experimental Fiber Network, Moves Closer To Becoming Cyberdyne Systems
By 2.10.10
In a move that surely has some folks at Verizon looking for a change of pants, Google announced today that it is planning to build and test a ultra-high-speed broadband network that would deliver data at 1 Gb per second, up to 100x that of current Internet connections. Oh, and they want to offer it on the cheap. [More]
Verizon iPhone Coming In Two Days … Two Months … Two Years
By 1.25.10
Is wishful thinking driving dozens of telecom pundits to conclude that Apple will announce that the iPhone is coming to carriers other than AT&T this Wednesday? Or are they just tired of reporting the same tired iTablet rumors?
Regardless, the internets are in a frenzy about the potential for a non-AT&T version of the iPhone, after a reporter for BusinessWeek ran a quote about the possibility from Tim Horan, a telecommunications analyst at Oppenheimer & Co
Verizon Shrinks The List Of Phones Subject To $350 ETF
By 1.20.10
Verizon has dropped 10 phones from its list of models that will trigger the high $350 early termination fee. Cnet wonders whether this is Verizon’s way of trying to make its “advanced devices are expensive to service” argument more palatable to the FCC, as the remaining models are all smartphones. [More]
Check Your Phone Bill For Bogus Charges From OAN
By 1.20.10
Check your phone bills for the past few months for a bogus $14.95 charge (+$.46 tax) from “OAN Ideal Savings Now.” A message on our voicemail hotline tipped us off, and online complaints, like these 188, echo our reader’s grievance. It’s called cramming, and it’s illegal. [More]
AT&T Debuts New Unlimited Plans In Attempt To Irritate Verizon
By 1.15.10
AT&T just put out a press release announcing new unlimited plans for all of their customers, even the ones with, gasp, iPhones. [More]
Verizon Introduces Mandatory $9.99 3G Data Plan
By 1.15.10
Verizon is cutting its prices, and by cutting them is actually raising them. What? Yeah, let’s let Ars Technica explain it. [More]
