Is Verizon Wireless Making It Harder to Avoid Charges?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
That's some really careful wording.
If you call and say you want data blocked they will do that, albeit after suggesting up-selling alternatives. But if you call and say "how can I stop getting these charges", then as the rep said you won't hear about the option to block data.
It's a shame Pogue didn't do a better followup on this part.
The next time you're on the phone, if you get a response that sounds like the CSR has had to say it a thousand times, the truth is you're probably just not asking the right question.
Case in point: at two companies I've worked for, we've had a military discount. But, we weren't able to offer it, even if it came up in conversation. If someone told me "I'm being deployed so I need to make sure my wife can pay my bill while I'm gone," I would have been required to walk him through adding her as an authorized user on the account.
On the other hand, if he said the exact same thing and finished with "oh, by the way, do you have a military discount," then all of a sudden his monthly bill is going to get lower (lowered by a lot in one case.)
I think they're worse. You at least know what you're getting into with a mugger. The carriers, however, are all about hiding information, causing unintended charges and profiting off their customers' lack of 24/7 vigilance, and manipulating you with crazy pricing plans. It astonishes me that this industry isn't better regulated (in the US), or given effective incentives to behave like good citizens.
It's a real shame that with companies like these, the engineers who actually do the work of adding value are not the ones driving these companies. Instead, it's some jerk in a suit whose job is to figure out how to use their leverage to wring more money out of people.
I don't understand why anyone would sign up for a 450 minute plan. Wouldn't every minute of phone usage be stress-inducing since the next minute might be billed at $0.45 ?
I also don't know why mobile companies don't automatically switch customers to the plan that would have been cheapest in a given month before sending the bill.
Mind you, I don't run a business or have family in different time zones, but it is very possible to use essentially no minutes and still communicate just fine for social purposes.
I always use less than 450 minutes a month and have accumulated over 3000 rollover minutes with AT&T in case I ever use more. I guess I'm not popular enough to worry about that.
"I also don't know why mobile companies don't automatically switch customers to the plan that would have been cheapest in a given month before sending the bill."
I think there's a company that used to do that, or still does that. I remember seeing ads for it.
Lots of AT&T practices screw me over -- most recently, being charged for calls that were never answered (but went to voicemail) while roaming overseas. But the availability of low-minute plans that fit my usage isn't one of the problems.
That those same low-minute plans trick others into paying overages? Not sure that can be helped. Those distracted by other things will always pay more.
Imposing fair disclosure or even a complexity budget on pricing by social regulation or unfair-practices lawsuits might make sense. But imposing a simplified/unified pricing on the industry is likely to backfire. The impetus to design competitive new services for niches -- like infrequent users, or heavy-data-users, etc. -- would be reduced, because innovation requires the same sort of variation that is exploited to confuse. And, regulated utilities can wind up extracting more from the rest of the economy in the long run from lingering inefficiencies and cost-plus regulated prices.