After more than six weeks, thousands of striking Verizon workers may be heading back to work soon. According to Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, the telecom giant and union leaders have reached an agreement in principle. [More]
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Verizon Wireless Hangs Up On You When You Record Them Back
By 5.25.16
One might think that if a company wants to have a conversation with their customers, once they’ve got them on the phone they’d stay on the line long enough to actually talk to them. But that wasn’t the case for one Consumerist reader, who said a Verizon rep hung up on him when informed that the customer would be recording their call. [More]
Philadelphia Investigating Verizon’s Completion Of FiOS Buildout
By 5.12.16
The city of Philadelphia gave Verizon until Feb. 25 to complete a seven-year agreement to bring FiOS service to all residents. While the company says it completed the job, the city is double checking the status by enlisting the help of those living within its borders. [More]
Verizon & ESPN Settle Lawsuit Over FiOS “Skinny Bundles”
By 5.10.16
More than a year after Disney-owned ESPN sued Verizon FiOS for not including the expensive sports network in the core channels of its so-called “skinny bundles” — and three months after Verizon brought ESPN back into the fold (while also reducing the number of skinny bundle options available to FiOS subscribers), the two companies have made nice and settled their lawsuit. [More]
What The Big Verizon Worker Strike Means For Consumers
By 4.13.16
Tens of thousands of Verizon employees walked off the job this morning, when months of inconclusive contract negotiations between the company and the union representing those workers finally stalled out completely. [More]
New Frontier Customers Get Bad First Impression After Verizon Sale And Switchover
By 4.5.16
Back in February, Frontier Communications and Verizon announced a massive deal where Verizon sold broadband, cable TV, and voice markets in California, Texas, and Florida to Frontier. Millions of customers came along with the sale, and they were supposed to be switched from Verizon to Frontier on April 1. Considering how well the switch went, that wasn’t a good date to choose. [More]
Verizon Will Charge Customers $20 To Upgrade Phones Because They Can
By 3.31.16
If you’re a Verizon customer planning to upgrade your phone, don’t be surprised when you’re charged an extra fee: as of Monday, April 4, the carrier will charge customers $20 to activate upgraded devices, even if they don’t buy the device from Verizon. Customers who get their phones elsewhere simply get the fee added to their next bill after the upgrade. [More]
Leaked Info For 1.5 Million Verizon Enterprise Customers Posted Online
By 3.25.16
While all of us regular Verizon customers can give a sigh of relief that our information wasn’t posted online in a recent hack attack, nearly 1.5 million customers of Verizon Enterprise Solutions — the portion of the company that deals with other businesses’ data breaches — weren’t so lucky. [More]
Netflix Admits To Throttling Its Own Streams On AT&T, Verizon Wireless Because Data Caps
By 3.25.16
If you have a network connection of a certain speed available on your phone, you expect receive data at roughly that speed, more or less. That’s how it works. Except that’s not how it’s been working for Netflix: the popular streaming video service was moving at a fraction of what users expected, on Verizon and AT&T networks. Consumers were all ready to line up and blame their mobile carriers, but the wireless companies weren’t the ones screwing around with anything, as it turns out. Netflix was. [More]
Verizon: We Still Hate Net Neutrality And Hope It Loses, But We Love Net Neutrality!
By 3.22.16
Verizon is at it again: with a ruling on net neutrality likely to show up in the next few weeks, they are falling all over themselves to talk about how much they love net neutrality and what it protects, while explaining that they hate the rule that’s been put in place to protect net neutrality, and think it could ruin everything. [More]
The Consumerist Guide To Understanding Your Verizon FiOS Bill
By 3.22.16
When you sign up for telecom services — some combination of TV, broadband, and/or phone — from your cable company, you’re told you’ll pay something like $49 or $99 a month… and yet the price you actually pay can be as much as 40% or more on top of that, thanks to a heap of sometimes confusing charges and fees. Which ones should you blame the government for, and which are made up by your cable company? One cable company at a time, we’ve been using real customers’ bills to break it down. In previous installations we’ve gone through Comcast, DirecTV, Charter, and TWC; now, it’s Verizon’s turn. [More]
Court Reminds Us All: You Have No Right To Sue Your Phone Company
By 3.14.16
If you don’t like your wireless company’s service, or your current rate plan, you’re free to change providers. But if you think your wireless provider is breaking the law, you can’t sue the company; and it doesn’t matter which of the four major carriers you have, because they all strip their customers’ of their legal rights. [More]
Verizon, FCC Settle “Supercookie” Investigation With $1.35M Fine And Opt-Out Ability
By 3.7.16
In 2014 and 2015, Verizon caught a lot of attention for doing a couple of very sneaky things. One, they were inserting a little piece of code into all the web traffic on your phone to track your every digital move for advertising purposes. And two, they weren’t letting you opt-out of the tracking, even if you opted out of the ads. [More]
Hundreds Of Thousands Of Consumers Call On AT&T To Help End Robocalls
By 2.23.16
In spite of efforts to legislate and regulate them out of existence, unwanted prerecorded and/or auto-dialed robocalls are still dominate consumers’ complaints about their phone service. Today, our colleagues at Consumers Union delivered a petition — signed by hundreds of thousands of people who want the nation’s telecom providers to do something about robocalls — to the AT&T headquarters in Texas. [More]
Pennsylvania Investigating State Of Verizon’s Landline Service
By 2.23.16
Verizon is once again being accused of neglecting its copper-wire landline network. Following complaints from workers of damaged, sagging lines and unsafe utility poles, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has announced it will be looking into whether or not the telecom giant’s actions put employees and the public at risk. [More]
Verizon Expands Fiberoptic Reach With $1.8B Purchase Of XO Communications’ Network
By 2.22.16
Verizon’s mission to have the fastest wireless technology among wireless and communication providers got a $1.8 billion boost Monday when the company announced plans to lease spectrum from and acquire XO Communications’ fiberoptic network. [More]
In Midst Of Disney Lawsuit, Verizon Creates FiOS “Custom TV” Package That Includes ESPN
By 2.19.16
ESPN is easily the most expensive single channel in any basic cable lineup, accounting for around $5 of the average cable bill just on its own. Cable companies are also contractually barred from putting the all-sports network on any sort of premium tier, which is why it was big news last year when Verizon FiOS announced a new “Custom TV” pricing model that made ESPN completely optional for everyone. That’s also why ESPN’s parent company Disney sued Verizon, alleging breach of contract. Now, Verizon has revised Custom TV to include ESPN and other sports channels for customers who want them. [More]
Verizon’s “Hum” Device For Your Car Will Rat Out Speeding Teens, Wandering Spouses
By 2.17.16
Do you have a teen driver in your household and want to know every time they get a little overzealous with the accelerator? Or maybe you’re pretty sure your spouse’s frequent trips to “the office” are not so innocent? If so, then an upcoming update for Verizon’s “hum” in-car smart device might be just what you’re looking for. [More]
