Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Verizon data charges

I’ve been awaiting our Verizon bill, curious to see if it would include data charges of the sort that David Pogue has been writing about. The bill arrived today, with $5.97 of such charges, all from hitting a key on a new phone by accident. So I called Verizon and asked that the charges be dropped. I was told that accessing the Verizon Wireless Mobile Web homepage incurs no charge, though that’s just how we incurred these charges. A bit of argument back and forth, and our bill is now back to its usual amount.

Verizon’s number: 1-800-922-0204.

A related post
Verizon’s $1.99 typos

comments: 4

Berit said...

I've been following this issue since you linked back in November, and I have to say I'm not sure what you are talking about. We have a family plan with 2 phones (neither smart), and while mine will access the "mobile web" if I press the "up" direction of the cross key from the default screen, I can also hit "end" when I see this (it then flashes the time used, 00:00:00) and it will return to the home screen--and nary a 1.99 charge on our bill. Of course, it could be that Verizon is deducting from my 700 shared minutes for this "web access".

So, is this new 1.99 charge issue occurring with Smart Phones only (and not my good ol' LG VX8300 or Darling's EnV2?)

Also, as a bonus, could you please tell me if the punctuation on that last sentence is correct? I seem to remember that if your parenthetical "stuff" ends with punctuation you do not have to add any for the whole sentence after closing the parenthesis.

Finally, thanks to you and Ben for the tip about Minuteur; I'm loving the pleasant sound of the "alarme" tone after the strident electronic shriek of my cheap kitchen timer.

Michael Leddy said...

Berit, I’m not sure how to answer your question about phones. We don’t have smart phones, and we ended up with these charges. David Pogue’s columns have comments from many readers who’ve had the same experience. Perhaps if you hit End quickly enough, the charge doesn’t register.

Your punctuation question, I can answer. : ) You’d still need punctuation outside the parenthesis to end the sentence. In your sentence, you could just put the question mark outside, since the whole sentence is a question.

“Alarme” is charming, both the spelling and the sound. The program’s developer asks for comments on his English, and I’ll admit that I e-mailed him to point out “alarme.” If he changes it, it’d be easy enough to change back by renaming the sound file.

Berit said...

Thank you very much, Sir, for your answers concerning these questions. I think that we will be renewing our contract with Verizon later this month–I am not entirely pleased with this, as I do think they are rather villainous, yet in my experience all the contract wireless providers ply their trade with a certain amount of wrongdoing. Those amongst our friend circle who use AT&T are having terrible service as of late (dropped calls galore). And so, I can only hope that our record of no $1.99 charges will continue in our new plan.

Thank you also for your kind answer to my punctuation question. I generally pride myself on being an exceptionally knowledgeable user of the English language, but I suppose that's just setting myself up to prove the old adage about pride going before a fall. :D I have taken your advice to heart and mended the error of my ways. :D

Michael Leddy said...

“A certain amount of wrongdoing,” yes. Verizon is at least an improvement over our previous carrier, Cellular One, whose representative years ago claimed that batteries for our phone were no longer manufactured and tried to sell us a new phone instead. The batteries of course were still being made. Pants on fire.

Speaking, writing, we all make mistakes. : )