I was paying some bills last week when I got to two Verizon bills – one for home and one for the office. I glanced at the amount of the home one and it was about $3.00 more than usual. Then I looked at the office invoice and saw that it too was about $3.00 more than usual. So, I wondered, what Verizon is up to now.
Surprise! When I looked inside at the details, I found that I had been billed for a “Shortfall Charge.” I have Verizon as my long distance carrier. It seems Verizon has come up with a scheme to charge people who choose their long distance service $2.00 plus the taxes bringing it to $2.46 a month for NOT making any long distance calls.
Here’s how it works. If you don’t make any long distance calls you get billed the $2.46. If you make calls that are less than $2.00 total a month, you get billed the difference. That about $30 a year you will pay for not making any long distance calls using Verizon. I told my butcher this story and he said he was going to start charging all his customers a monthly fee for not buying enough beef. Then he laughed and was still laughing 15 minutes later and shaking his head at Verizon’s arrogance and stupidity.
Verizon just doesn’t get it. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on mass media advertising trying to convince people to use their services while, at the same time, coming up with schemes like this that totally turn people off. Call them up and tell them you never agreed to a change in your plan and let me know what they tell you.