Elepent

Well, we were told they had the best network coverage. Great, wonderful, comparable service plans, we’ll take it. Or, so we thought.

This month, only the 2nd in our contract, and our first full month of regular usage, our bill is over budget to the tune of nearly $200, for 758MB of transfer. Why?

Verizon charges .25 cents/MB for overage.
ATT: $0.00048/KB which equals $0.49152/MB
Sprint: 5¢/MB

Our allotment is 5 Gigs, the largest any current provider offers, for 59.99, which is comparable to each of the other plans. Transfer weighs in at about $0.01/MB. Read that again, Verizon charges a 2500% markup on their overage. At either of the other companies, while still being sufficiently robbed, our overage would have cost us one-fifth what it has at Verizon.
Now I know business is business, and all cellular companies are out to make money, but this is beyond highway robbery and into the realm of “Thanks, we can’t pay our rent” for someone living as close to the poverty line as us, and how many other American’s today?

You could say to us, “Well, don’t have cellular internet service then.” Unfortunately all of our income and personal business relies on having steady internet access, and we’re already trying to make do with the least expensive solution. Opting out of an unfairly priced but necessary service is not really an option at this point, since we are also signed into a contract.

Now, I’ve never in my life paid even a $200+ phone or internet bill and I certainly don’t intend to do so now. But I’ve called customer service, and their answer is to charge us $100/mo for twice the allotted usage.  Unfortunately, we’re already driving one another nuts having to share the aircard because we don’t currently have a router. My reasonable, make-everyone-happy solution? Get a second Verizon aircard contract for 59.99/mo and credit us for the current overage. Well, they’d have to transfer me to sales, sign me up for a second 2yr contract, and then MAYBE they would offer me a credit on my current outrageous bill.
Not good enough. I pay a visit to a Verizon store, thinking they can handle both the customer service AND the sales under one roof and I can get some kind of guarantee that I’m not going to get financially raped for this month’s minuscule overage. Oh, no. I have to call customer service. I just told you I did that already. Why don’t you call customer service for me and get this resolved, isn’t that your job? Or does it say “Nothing is your responsibility, please give customers the run-around at any and every opportunity” in your job description? It must, because I’m not getting much more than “I can’t do that” from any CSR I’ve talked to over the phone or in the store.

I’ve complained inwardly about the Cingular service going into the crapper after the AT&T merger, but this is absolutely THE WORST cellular customer service, and possibly some of the worst customer service, period, that I’ve ever had to deal with. I essentially threatened to pay off the bill and my contract cancellation fee on the spot and the CSR just treated me like an idiot, saying that would “defeat the purpose of having the service in the first place.” No, silly, it would leave me free to sign up under a competitor. If Verizon doesn’t care about our patronage, even though it will cost us half a month’s worth of income to escape their clutches, in the long run it will bleed us of much less than this kind of monthly robbery, and it’s probably what we’ll end up doing.

Anyone have anything to say about either of the other cellular aircards? We currently have our phone service through AT&T.  The only reason we deviated was because [it seemed] there was no benefit to us having the aircard on the same plan, since they treat each one like a new contract and all of the plans seemed comparable on the surface. If I had had the option of adding a line to my existing contract, and then just paying a larger data fee on that line, that would have been ideal.