How Verizon Cheats Its Customers Out Of Millions

[jeffrey]

"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...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue-email.html?_r=1

[Inkstain82]

I've had Verizon for years and never seen such a charge.

[littlemama]

call verizon. i believe there is a way you can block that.

[buildmybudget]

You can also just customize the phone interface so that button performs another function. That was how I always avoided the accidental internet connect.

[MonkeyMama]

I've had Verizon for 15 years and never heard of this. I think the article is a little inflated. As another poster mentioned, so call and have the feature turned off, if it is an issue.

The early termination fees are illegal in the state I live in, so no biggie there either (for me!)

We stay with Verizon because it is the best cell phone service for our needs. We've voluntarily stayed with them for 15 years... Best coverage and prices. They may have less of an edge with coverage in this day and age (I would hope), but the prices are still best for our usage. (My spouse had ATT or Sprint for his job about a decade ago - talk about horrible service).