- October 28th, 2010 by Ryan Denker
For the last few years, Verizon has been erroneously charging its customers data fees. Even when customers had phones without data plans, they would sometimes be charged without any real indication. Some of the data charges were so small that customers didn’t notice, but these small charges added up pretty big for the carrier.
Verizon is now apologizing for these “errors” and is paying back $52.8 million to its customers who were wrongly charged. To avoid this sort of issue in the future, the carrier is also giving every single customer a 50kb buffer in case they accidentally access the data network from their phones. (Some phones make it too easy to enter the data portal by accident.)
The government wasn’t all too pleased, either, and so Verizon is coughing up $25 million to the U.S. Treasury as a settlement after an FCC inquiry.
There is almost no doubt that Verizon was aware of these charges, and it was infuriating to see it carry on. Luckily, the government put an end to the practice and now the FCC is looking to make sure that “bill shock” won’t be an issue for customers in the future. Carriers like Verizon will be forced to become more transparent about billing practices and may even be forced to send out notifications when users are about to incur overage charges.
[Via Broadcasting Cable]
