Verizon Wireless Confirms $2 Fee for Making One-Time Payments

You can pay your bill online without setting up auto-pay and without incurring this fee.

Just use your bank's online bill payment service. That's ACH and therefore this fee doesn't apply. You can do it manually each month even if you use paper billing. (That's how I pay most of my bills.)

This fee is only if you're using a credit card. Credit cards do come with fees, paid by the merchant. 2 percent is typical for any kind of rewards card. So on a $100 phone bill, that's $2. Verizon is simply passing that on to you.

I do think it's a stupid move on Verizon's part, but that's what's going on.

"they're charging it to offset a fee"

FIRST.. they're a how many billion dollar a year company?
SECOND.. what bank company is charging VZW this "fee" to process their customer's credit card fees and what kind of a hold do they have on VZW that they can't just say "HELL NO"
THIRD.. how much could it possibly cost? I highly highly highly doubt it's $2 each time I pay with my credit card when I choose to.

NO, I will not authorize you to take money out of my account each month.. bc you're billing is always so perfectly accurate, right?

I don't know what anyone could possibly say to make this acceptable.

This is just stupid and anti-consumer. I can't figure out for the life of me how the top 2 carriers keep their customers.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/globalText?textNa ... »

Can Verizon Wireless Change This Agreement or My Service?
We may change prices or any other term of your Service or this agreement at any time,but we'll provide notice first, including written notice if you have Postpay Service. If you use your Service after the change takes effect, that means you're accepting the change. If you're a Postpay customer and a change to your Plan or this agreement has a material adverse effect on you, you can cancel the line of Service that has been affected within 60 days of receiving the notice with no Early Termination Fee.

This is just Verizon's way of "passing the buck". They have to pay a fee in order to accept credit cards, and are passing that fee on to the consumer. That is wrong. In fact, both Mastercard and Visa have in their merchant contracts that they can offer a discount for cash, but can not charge a fee to use a credit card. (http://www.merchantcouncil.org/merchant-acco unt/operation/pass-fee-customer.php) I'm sure Verizon will get around this by making sure they call it something else since you don't get charged a surcharge for paying by credit card in person.

So my choices are Auto-Pay or ACH, neither of which is something I will do. I prefer to know ever bill that comes through and pay for it myself, when I want to. If something has caused m...
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The only thing I hate about this, is that AT&T& will be next! Ugh! This is ridiculous...

Credit card companies and banks charge companies a small fee to process credit card payments. This is how a bank stays in business (you think they stay in business by holding your $500 check and then giving your $500 back at the end of the week...there's no income there at all!)


Verizon is saying "enough is enough" to this charge as they're losing capital and need to make up for it. So, they pass the charge onto customers.


My local breadstore does the same thing if you pay with a debit card. They charge a debit fee.


I'll call it a "lazy/convienence fee", essentially that's what it is. You can still pay by cash at a store, by check at a store, or by check by mail...however if you want the LAZY/convient way of going through...
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--you nag me incessantly every time I log into your site about 'Go Paperless!' so you can save money, but you want me to pay you $2 to pay my bill.

I'll just write you a check every month--old school. That'll keep YOU spending money to process my bills.

A**holes.

Time to leave without ETF.

But why is there no fee if it's set up as an auto bill pay? Isn't it the same process? Or can they make a deal with your company of choice to always have it set on a certain date and therefore it gets rid of the fee? It doesn't make any sense to me unless it's that. Processing a CC is the same regardless, so please do enlighten me!

When I worked for VZW in 2000, we charged the same fee then it went away. Just another reason TMO is Superior.

Maybe they can charge a $2.00 fee every time they restore service after an outage. Call it a "Reestablishment Fee." With three outages this month, that'd make up for lost revenue!

It's hard to make AT&T look good with their T-Mobile failure, but Verizon is doing an excellent job.

I've already seen quite the backlash about this... Enough that I'd be willing to bet that this doesn't go through.

Same thing happened when Bank of America said they were going to charge a $5 fee per month to use your debit card... enough backlash caused them to cancel that idea.

I work at a Verizon Retailer and we use the phone system to aid customers with their payments... can only imagine how fun it's going to be to tell them we have a convience fee for every form of payment (we currently have one on cash).

...why can't they just do the right thing

I wonder if they should have just listed the specific circumstances which will trigger the new charge, rather than confusingly list 8-10 circumstances for which the fee will be waived. I've read the PhoneScoop article twice, and it is still not clear if we will incur the fee in our circumstance.

Regarding comments that we should all just enroll in auto-pay: Not me, I want the power to disburse the funds only when I allow it, never to let automated systems go into my accounts and extract the money. These online & automated systems are still too non-secure and non-trustworthy. They have a lot of work to do in terms of making these systems properly secure & trustworthy.

For The Same Reason a Dog Will Lick His Balls...

Because They CAN!