Yes Verizon has stated they will be charging customers a $2.00 fee for paying their bill online.
Lets just back-up and see why this is so totally absurd.
Banks and every other large business, especially those that have multiple mergers in the last 10 years, have spent a lot of time and money convincing the public to be green and paperless by paying online.
While the main reason they took this initiative is that it saved them lots and lots of money directly in the form of bank fees for paper transactions and mailing and printing costs and indirectly by fewer employees required to handle payments.
So they got what they wanted and a very large portion of Verizons customers pay online.
And now, the savings to them will now cost you extra.
To this author, reality seems to read to me that after the expensive merger with Alltel and steep competition in the cellular market, raising base rates of cell service or Cable TV / Internet service to boost a bottom line would be suicidal to Verizon. So they want to bring it in, in the form of fees that they thought would not be noticed.
Surprise… we noticed and quickly.
So I ask the question… How was the merger with Alltel beneficial to the public ? The company was prosperous and expanding. It is not like they were bankrupt and failing.
So will you condone this activity from a company that has a monopoly on CDMA Cellular Service. That means you can not take a phone purchased at their store to any other carrier for service because they own all the property for the technology.
Because of all the merger activity on the GSM tech side of Cell Phones, You have little choice. It’s like voting for the lesser of two evils. Thank goodness the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile did not pass the smell test or you basically would have only 3 Cell Networks incomparable with each other.
I have always preferred to pay by check and by mail until one of those company’s pushing me to pay online will guarantee the safety and security of my email and the electronic transaction itself.
What is curious to me since the big move in the banking industry really was this very same electronic transactions and paperless savings. It seemed only natural to think once they had most of us converted to electronic money and debit cards that they were going to start with fees here and there until we got use to the idea again. Then Whammy! OK I was daydreaming or was I ?
It sure is interesting that all this profitable merger activity in the banking industry and all the huge savings with electronic transactions has yet to yeild the shareholder a reasonable share of the new profits. Where do they go … more merger?
That is a subject for a future MOOT Post !