Verizon Drops the Call: Backtracks on $2 Fee After Customer Outrage

By Admin on December 30, 2011 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Verizon's $2 fee is no more. The nation's largest wireless announced a new few that was to appear on invoices each time a customer makes a one-time payment via phone or Internet.

But the next day Verizon backed down.

The company has reversed its decision to charge a $2 fee for one-time ill payments after a storm of criticism from consumers and the U.S. communications regulator, Reuters reports.

The biggest U.S. wireless operator retracted its decision on Friday, just a day after it announced the fee, which was to have begun January 15.

Verizon had insisted the fee was necessary to make ends meet.

The Verizon fee for single bill payments was all set to begin Jan. 15, CNN reports. The fee aims to offset Verizon's costs in offering one-time payments as an option for customers, the company said in a statement.

Verizon Wireless has 91 million subscribers, but it's not clear how many make one-time payments that would incur the new Verizon fee, CNN reports.

Some critics, like Kyle Wagner at the tech website Gizmodo, blasted Verizon's fee as "preposterous."

"It almost certainly costs Verizon more to handle your bill if you pay by check/mail," Wagner wrote for Gizmodo. He suggested Verizon customers protest the new fee by sending payments only via U.S. mail. "Let's bury them under a mountain of paper and see how they like that."

Others say Verizon's fee is very similar to recent proposed bank fees, such as Bank of America's proposed $5 fee for debit-card use. Those fees caused a consumer uproar in late 2011, and banks soon backed down, CNN reports.

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