Verizon's double billing policy!

I don't know what to say.. other than "CONGRATULATIONS!". I guess this just shows that if you're willing to go that little bit futher against the unethical-but-legal practises of modern business then you can actually get somewhere. No business likes bad publicity, and they'll often back down if faced with it.

Again, very well done.

 

They have not doean anything illegal. Their contract states "The billing for roaming minutes used on another carrier's network and related long distance charges (if applicable) may be delayed depending on when Verizon Wireless is billed by the other carrier. These roaming minutes may be applied against your monthly airtime allowance in the month they appear on your bill and not during the month of usage and may result in phone charges in addition to your monthly access charge."

That means that anytime you are off of Verizon's network (remember that a lot of places that aren't roaming are off of Verizon's network and they merely foot the roaming charges) the minutes may come on some future bill and that YOU AGREE that it is OK. Remember, you signed Verizon's contract.

If you want to see a more accurate Verizon coverage map check out http://www.verizonwireless.com/images/maps/prepay_natl.gif

Outside of the shaded areas Verizon owns NO coverage. That doesn't mean that you will get roaming fees outside of that area, but you will be on another carrier's network. Even within the shaded areas there are places where Verizon doesn't have coverage.

 

It's cheaper for Verizon to give you $75 than to have an attorney prepare for arbitration at $200 an hour.

 

hehehe $75 credit, nice one!!

 

I have been following the discussion on this "thread" and would like to shed some light on the situation. I worked for 13 months for Cingular Wireless as a CSR, much of my time was spent apologizing and explaining the "delayed" billing phenomenon. Customers would go ballistic, when calls that occured during a previous billing cycle(30-90 days)came home to "roost" on the current billing cycle.

One thing to keep in mind, you were billed at your carrier's standard over your package minute rate, which at Cingular was like 31 cents, BUT it could have been worse, without the no-roaming rate plan, those overage minutes would have been billed at Cingular's roaming rate of 69 cents a minute!! So there is a savings, you could alway's go back to a plan that doesn't have your roaming covered and I guarantee you won't like those bills either!!

The way it was explained to me by the management in our call center was that the delayed billing was due to the fact that all the major carriers first submitted the charges to a national clearinghouse, which then in turn submitted the charges to the proper carrier. This is what accounted for the large time delay. Due to the variations in billing systems, transmission technologies between various carriers(tdma,cdma,gsm)this was neccessary for billing to be routed this way. Also they would tell us the real culprit was the FCC, but no explanation was forthcoming as to how that was the case.

This of course could all be BS, but this is how it was explained to us. Beleive you me there were numerous complaints on this issue and if I had a dollar for every customer that stated they were going to start a class action lawsuit to stop the practice of "delayed billing" I could be retired to Cozumel by now. I do beleive there has been litigation over this issue and the Cellular industry has won, any attorneys out there that would like to speak experience on this issue?

I understand your position on this issue, it seems like a very unfair billing practice, but again, what would you rather do, pay your roaming charges every month or every few months pay for over your package minutes at a lower rate than roaming would cost?

 

Why is that an either-or question? While I think that you have no right to complain if you didn't read the small print before signing, I see no reason why this process could not be more-or-less instantaneous - and I speak not as a frustrated wireless user, but as a full-fledged systems architect.

 

I can understand the delays, but if a call from march doesn't get billed until may, they should take that out of the minutes you used in march, not from your allotment from may. There's no (technical) reason this couldn't be done, and I think you could make a legal argument backing it. The only potential problem I see with it is that there may be a law preventing a vendor from retroactively changing a previous month's bill that had already been settled. However, if everyone knew the rules going in, I think we could all agree this would be a much better system.

 

I completely understand your anger, I 've been through this with AT&T several times. Each time I called I was told that they would remove the minutes(from dates in the previous billing period) from my current bill (if the previous month did not exceed my alotted minutes) this one time! Apparently they do not keep a record of this , since I have been succcessful at having them remove the overage charges every time, at least 7 times! I have since switched to Verizon and I do understand that all carriers have this policy. The difference with Verizon is the coverage is much better and I can stay on Verizon's network in all states I travel in. I do agree this is "double billing" since you have paid for the minutes in your billing period and it's not your fault the roaming partners do not bill your carrier in a timely fashion. Good luck with trying to convince the FCC to ban this practice!