Verizon Investigates Third Data Outage in Under a Month (Reuters)
Verizon Wireless is investigating reports that some customers were experiencing trouble accessing its fourth generation (4G) network, a spokesman told Reuters, as the company yet again had to face service problems with its faster wireless service.
Verizon customers around the United States are reporting widespread outages of the company's 4G wireless service, as well as spotty performance of the older 3G service, the Los Angeles Times said on its website.
Since Verizon seems intent on penalizing customers who /dare/ to actually try to deal with a /human/, I suggest that everyone who reads this start paying their bills by check. That way, Verizon can find out just how much money it is saving by accepting electronic payments, and it will stop demanding tribute for having its employees deign to talk to little people.
I have a little trouble understanding this. I never speak to a human when I am paying my bill by phone. AT&T Wireless has *729 (*PAY) to pay your bill and when you have paid it once by credit card it asks in succeeding months if you want to pay by the same credit card. Press 1 if you do. Paying on their website is kind of tedious, but paying by your phone is one of the easiest "pay bill" functions I've encountered.
I've never tried paying it by phone using ACH, but it will probably work, too. Won't your bank's "bill pay" function also work? All I saw in the earlier post was a charge for paying by credit card.
Verizontal is planning to levy a fee on anyone who doesn't have /automatic/ payments set up; i.e., on anyone who insists on retaining control over their bank account or credit card. The reason is that Verizontal and its minions know that they can pack the bills, cram the extras in, and round upward without anyone noticing: after all, if the payment is "automatic", then so is the approval. Charging every "automatic payer" a few mills extra every month will earn some middle-management daddy's boy a nice bonus, so Verizontal will stick a fee to anyone who wants to have the chance to /look/ at the amount they're paying before they say "Yes", instead of finding out about it after the fact.
Yes, this is annoying, but it might be justified...
- The entire credit card system has gotten rather greedy in recent years, most recently using "security concerns" as a new profit center. (I'm assuming for the moment that one avenue might be to pay your bill via CC, either "live" with an operator or through a recurring debit.)
Credit card processing markups due to "security issues" costs merchants way more than it should. It's particularly infuriating because the domestic USA credit card system itself is poorly designed for security. Fraud is too easy, and in most cases only feeble bandaids have been applied thus far. Consumers and merchants take the hit for a shabby system.
- having a live operator hand-hold as you make an electronic payment (CC, checking transfer, etc) could be quite expensive.
What they probably want is an ACH via your online bill-pay service -- cheap and secure, assuming you do the "push" from your checking account rather than the merchant doing the "pull" -- lots of horror stories with the latter. (It's never recommended that anyone is allowed to debit your account for any reason. YOU always initiate payment from your end.)
But even paper check processing would surely be cheaper than a live operator assist, and given the new CC rates, might even be competative.
Note that "paper" check processing doesn't stay paper for very long. If I understand the new system correctly, at the point of deposit (the merchant bank or the merchant's own accounting center) the check is scanned, has some OCR magic applied, and then almost immediately becomes an ACH. Much of the old-days physical shuffling of checks through the banks is no more, and thus check handling costs have gone way down.
So while V might prefer ACH, they'll likely shrug and happily take your check.
As far as getting a live operator, well, good luck with that. :)
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***** Moderator's Note *****
I agree that check-handling costs have gone way down: the new practice of automating check scans at ATM's or at the teller's window means millions of dollars per day in lost "float" for account holders, which is why banks were willing to spend the money to make it happen.
The point, however, isn't about checks or credit cards per se: it's about Verizon's disdain for those who owe them money, and about the corporation's let-them-eat-cake attitude toward their customers. Verizon doesn't like anyone to have any chance to /question/ Ma Bell's omniscience, nor does Verizontal want any of its serfs^h^h^h^h^h rate-payers to have to /decide/ to pay the bill: after all, what every monopolist wants, and has always wanted, is to be able to pick people's pockets one penny at a time. This isn't about check vs. credit-card payments: it's about Verizontal having the chance to pad the bills at every turn, and to screw the "sheeple" with new fees, new profit packs, new "compliance charges", new accounting methods, and old-fashioned rate increases.
Bill Horne Moderator
Moderator's Note Copyright (C) 2011 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.
Others may choose to continue using the Verizon network infrastructure, but through the intermediation of an MVNO like Page Plus, who have no such Mickey Mouse payment or billing fees, and whose help desk is based deep within the bread basket of these United States :-) .
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