Verizon will not be charging "convenience" fees for one-time bill payments made online and customers have Change.org to thank. After a petition to stop the fee gained support, Verizon dropped the charge.
Verizon Wireless announced that it listened to its customers and pulled the fee even before it was implemented.
With a few hours after an avalanche of complaints and media coverage Verizon issued the following statement:
"The company made the decision in response to customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions. The company continues to encourage customers to take advantage of the numerous simple and convenient payment methods it provides.
“At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless."
Last night, Katchpole, a Verizon customer and recent college graduate from Washington, DC, whaunched an explosive new Change.org campaign calling on Verizon Wireless to stop its plans to implement a new $2 “convenience fee” for single bill payments by phone or online. Over 35 other Verizon customers started similar campaigns on Change.org in the last 24 hours.
Molly created the petition after news surfaced Thursday about the fee. Within hours, more than 95,000 consumers signed Katchpole’s petition.
Verizon has been busy dealing with customer problems. The Verizon 4G LTE network was down most of Wednesday while 3G data was not affected. Today, we named the top best Verizon Wireless smartphones which were not rated according to extra payments.
I really am at a loss to understand Verizon's decision and its renouncement on the following day must be one of the dumbest business moves of 2011 in a very strong field. What were the Verizon guys thinking? This $2 fee looks to a customer exactly the way BofA's $5 debit card fee did a couple of months ago when it caused a huge backlash, prompting the bank to quickly scrap it (but not before the damage to its reputation, such as it was, was already done). I would've expected no one to try anything remotely resembling such a fee for at least a couple of years. As I said, I'm at a loss.