Saturday, January 7, 2012

Verizon $2 Fee To Pay Your Bill

Verizon 2 Dollar Fee To Pay Your Bills Online
     Verizon came up with a fabulous plan hey let's charge people two dollars more per month to pay their bill online or over the phone. So the deal is this it's cheaper to get people to pay online then to send paper statements and pay for postage and all of the moving parts that go along with that. Think machines to open all the envelopes and if not machines then real people as opposed to just going into a bank account electronically. Not to mention that they have to buy the paper and the toner just to print the bill and send it out to you so you can pay it and then stick that bill either in your file cabinet forever or in your shredder. Nice waste of resources and money if you ask me.
Why Charge You To Pay Online
     Well, at some point they reaches a fairly large customer base probably the majority who does pay online so it's convenient and they don't need to file cabinet shredder etc. At that point Verizon is saying to themselves we have something here that everyone loves how to monetize it. Well, the customers will accept a 2 dollar charge for that convenience even though the convenience saves the company a ton of money.
Public Outcry
     The public outcry over the 2 dollar fee was swift and starting to look like it was going to cost Verizon some customers. I mean it was really looking bad kind of like the whole move your money day that hit the large banks after Bank of America was going to charge customers 5 dollars a month for using your debit card. I don't know what the final outcome of that fiasco was but let's just say that the Credit Unions had a green Christmas thanks to Bank of America's stupid move.
What to Do
     What can we do? Simple, just don't stand for charges like this on things that everyone does and actually makes costs to companies cheaper. That is a no brainer. I mean I can understand that fuel costs more so it costs more to deliver something but to charge for something that makes your business run cheaper is just stupid and counterproductive. These two example should show that it can actually hurt your bottom line as a company as well.
So when a company comes up with a bogus charge just to raise fees to raise fees that you disagree with set up a Facebook page and you will get some followers. Once you have your followers you will notice a core group then talk to this core group and come up with a plan of action. Like the move your money day. That was very simple very creative and everyone could do it and it hits the company swiftly and easily shows them the power of a small group of people who's idea resonates with a larger public that agrees with them. The Verizon case if it went too far could have been a thing like switch phone company day or something like that.

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