Verizon to keep charging controversial fee despite $100M settlement

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/verizon-wont-stop-charging-3-30-telco-recovery-fee-may-raise-it-again/

by kurthr • 3 years ago

58 54 3 years ago

EMCymatics• 3 years ago

Untouchable.

gruez7• 3 years ago

In this case they haven't been convicted of any wrongdoing, nor was there any precedent that what they did was wrong. Given the above, them continuing to do whatever they were doing seems like the justice system working as intended? Obviously many people think they're guilty of something, but in this case it seems like the plaintiff's case was weak rather than verizon being "Untouchable".

josefritz• 3 years ago

They paid a 100M settlement. Pretty sure that's not a charitable donation.

ikekkdcjkfke• 3 years ago

Could another party replay this case, and they would have to settle again?

danaris3• 3 years ago

They "haven't been convicted of any wrongdoing" because we have developed a detestable habit, in this country, of allowing—in some cases even encouraging—large companies and wealthy individuals to simply settle major lawsuits "without admitting any wrongdoing" rather than forcing them to actually, yes, admit that lying and taking money they weren't owed and didn't need (or whatever other particular awful thing a given suit is about) is wrong, and requiring them to change their behavior.

All because it would be more expensive to actually see justice carried out.

It really makes me wonder just how expensive it would be, in net, to nationalize and/or break up companies like Verizon, and force them to be good corporate citizens either by running them directly, or by cutting them down to a much more manageable size and actually giving them meaningful competition again for the first time in far, far too long.

j-bos2• 3 years ago

One thing that rubs me the wrong but same way about stories like this, certain layoffs, ads in paid subscriptions, the sales of personal data, and shoddy-safe planes falling out of the sky, is the insincerity of it. Verizon is charging a separate hidden fee, supposedly to pay for gov't fees, but it's not a gov't mandated fee. Anyone with eyes open can smell the double talk. It's tiresome to constantly be lied to and need to be guarding against institutional pickpockets.

eek2121• 3 years ago

What ads and what sale of data? Ars does not sell or give away paid subscriber data, and they certainly don't show ads to paid subscribers.

danaris3• 3 years ago

I don't see anywhere in the GP a suggestion that anything in their criticism is directed at Ars Technica...

j-bos2• 3 years ago

Sorry for the lack of clarity. It was a general comment about certain trends I've been noticing and not specific to any one offender in particular. Certainly not Ars, I'm not familiar with them on that level.

landedgentry• 3 years ago

It's exhausting. I wish there were a way to quantify this, because it feels more and more unabashed, egregious, common and normalized.

p1mrx• 3 years ago

Maybe they'll change course if we throw enough adjectives at them.

kmeisthax5• 3 years ago

In my opinion, advertised prices should always be inclusive of taxes and fees. Anything less is cost obfuscation. It's like the ol' eBay scam of 1 cent items that have the whole cost of the item built into the shipping just to confuse people.

6493747485• 3 years ago

The argument against this, specifically with regard to taxes, is that baking in the tax conceals the impact of that tax from the consumer. Obviously this primarily applies to sales taxes since production taxes aren't consumer facing (even if they impact consumers) but it's still better imo than simply not having that information since most laws are already fire and forget type affairs and so their costs can compound over time to degrees that aren't as immediately obvious to the public if they aren't displayed frequently and visibly.

rvba• 3 years ago

Goods distibuted in samw geographical area generally have similar prices even after transportation, so shop in county A that has lower tax, will be cheaper than same shop 1 kilometer (1 mile) in county B, that has higher tax. Why would the shop want to hide the tax?

In EU shops are made to show price per kilogram / liter too.

jjeaff2• 3 years ago

I agree that taxes need to be applied separately so the public knows how much they are paying in taxes. Also, if you required including the tax, it would not be possible for most sites to advertise any prices without the user creating an account, providing their shipping address and logging in, since tax rates vary by country, county, even municipality.

kmeisthax5• 3 years ago

I'm not objecting to knowing what the taxes are, I'm objecting to companies being able to hide the taxes to make switching look like a better deal than it actually is.

If Verizon advertises, say, $50/mo cellphone service, they're actually going to charge you an extra $15 or so, but they won't tell you what you're paying in taxes until you've actually signed up for the service and paid the switching costs. I want Verizon to advertise $65/mo ($50/mo base + $15/mo fees).

anigbrowl5• 3 years ago

Ahahaha, like retailers care about me so much and want me to be more active in local politics. That could be achieved by including the information on the receipt, but omitting it from the advertised price is a low grade scam.

gnicholas• 3 years ago

Yes, the full price needs to be listed. At the same time, if there is the need to disaggregate the items so you can see where your money is going. For example, how much is tax that goes to the government (and might be less if you lived in a different jurisdiction), and how much goes to the company? Among the latter, how much is for the base service versus addons (that you might not need)?

jjeaff2• 3 years ago

That one penny eBay truck may have been meant to confuse people in some cases, but it was more likely that it was a way to get around eBay fees. For a time, ebay only charged their 15% based on the sale price, exclusive of the shipping cost. Once eBay noticed a lot of people doing this, they changed their fee structure and I very soon after started seeing a lot fewer penny items with high shipping cost.

anigbrowl5• 3 years ago

Having lived in other countries, the US habit of 'nickel and diming' every sale with taxes and fees that aren't fully announced until payment is one of the most annoying cultural failings. Even governments do it; I recently bought a tree removal permit and my city tacked on a ~15% 'technology fee'. This after I wasted a good hour dealing with the absolutely awful website for the permit application - having to enter the same information on multiple pages by hand, broken address lookup, ugliest imaginable design and layout.

kencausey• 3 years ago

I won't defend most of the practices but sales tax is, in at least some US states, required by law to be listed separately.

example: See Kentucky Revised Statues (KRS) chapter 139 section 210 paragraph 1: (PDF) https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...

edit: cited example

colinmorelli• 3 years ago

One complication of this is that sales taxes can apply down to the city level, meaning the amount the vendor collects after tax can be somewhat variable. This would make a lot of sense if we had a federal sales tax that was just distributed to states based on the purchase location.

tzs• 3 years ago

Consider a merchant in Seattle, Washington, USA that has several stores around town wanting to run an ad on a billboard or on radio or on TV or in the Seattle Times for a product that is available at all its stores.

The total sales tax could be any of the following, depending on the location of the particular store in the city that the consumer actually buys from: 9.2%, 10.1%, 10.2%, 10.25%, 10.3%, or 10.5%.

How should that be advertised?

Similarly for services except the sales tax is based on where the service is consumed rather than on the location of the seller.

talldatethrow• 3 years ago

The store could advertise the sale price it wants, and deal with the taxes internally based on each location. Some locations have higher tax rates than others... Businesses know that, and could make location decisions based on that if they think the 1% swing is important.

mrandish• 3 years ago

This judgement only settles overcharges through Nov 8th. If Verizon keeps charging this discretionary undisclosed fee, hopefully enterprising class action lawyers will make suing them for settlements an ongoing business model. Future judgements against the same behavior might also make judges amenable to increasing punitive damages on top of recovery of actual damages. I suspect that might eventually "encourage" Verizon to reevaluate the cost/benefit of continuing this practice.

more_corn• 3 years ago

Because they make more than $100m by keeping it.

mike503• 3 years ago

Did they make over $100M from the fees? If so, it's still profit.

Verizon to keep charging controversial fee despite $100M settlement

Related Stories