Verizon Deception

[DEADn]

Tell me if I am wrong in this scenario but I think Verizon is very deceptive in their business practice.

Wife and I had landline and internet until the beginning of March. Verizon offer their FIOS for a reduced price and we can check it out for 30 days. If we like it we can keep it for this new rate for 2 years. Otherwise we can discontinue this. I had assumed, I should have asked, that I would be able to go back to what we had for the same rate. WRONG.

I called Verizon today to cancel the cable and go back to the double play. It would saved us about $25 a month. The agent told me that Verizon is not offering the plan for that rate anymore and that if I did go back to that plan I would only be saving $7 a month. WHAT!!!!

It seems to me that Verizon isn't going to tell you that you will not be able to go back to your previous plan for the same price if you don't like the new plan within 30 days. I only assume this and I remember the agent telling me I could do this. I found it very deceptive. Now, if Verizon brings back this double play plan for a cheaper price I will have to pay a penalty because I will have broken the 2 year agreement with the FIOS.

Am I wrong in feeling this way?

 

[DEADn]

Update

I called Verizon again to talk to another person. I wanted to see if their was consistent information and thought I might be able to talk to someone who can work with me. True to form I found someone who was able to give me a $20 credit on what I have an actually lower my bill to what I had before and even lower. i.e. My previous bill was $94 with just landline and internet. I am being given a $20 credit and my bill will be $88 for 12 months. Yeah, I can deal with that and this is exactly what I was looking for in the bill. I really could care less about the cable FIOS part of it. It is the billing that I was concerned.

 

[summersgold]

I canceled cable tv also. Cable tv is garbage tv. I use my laptop to connect to my tv and watch You-Tube videos. There are over a million videos on You-Tube, some are very interesting. There is also Hulu.com where you can watch some tv shows for free.

 

[Geardepot]

Glad to hear you got things taken care of.

I do not have cable TV anymore, and havent for years. My personal cocktail for cable replacement is as follows -

NetFlix - Love it, not the best selection, but it is simple to use.

Hulu Plus - I do not use this much anymore because there still ads, and I do not like to pay for ads. In fact, I think I am going to cancel this right now.

Amazon Prime - This is amazing! Great selection.

YouTube - Depends on what you want to watch, there is a lot of educational material on here that I love.

Popcorn Time - A great program that is like the NetFlix for pirates, it pops up with a nice interface and has a list of movies you can watch, it uses popular torrents to then start streaming that movie within a few seconds. Very cool.

Plex - Harder to setup and you actually have to download the media.

Free-TV-Online - a user driven website with plenty of pirated shows, you can usually watch the show online a few hours after it came out on normal cable.

I have all of these hooked to my TV using a ROKU 3, but the new ROKU 3500R will work great, it just came out to compete with the Google Chromcast. The ROKU works great with NetFlix, Hulu Plux, Amazon Prime, and Plex. There is a little hack online that allows you to watch YouTube on the ROKU box as well, pretty neat. The ROKU will not do popcorn time and free-tv-online though, thats computer only.

There are a few other things I use, but these are my main go-to solutions, I love it.

G

 

[Ranchhand]

I hate dealing with Verizon, they have me in a contract and half the time I can't get service because of where I live, plus they are expensive compared to other providers. Verizon is suppose to be the best provider in my area but I'm not so sure about that after my ongoing experience with them.

 

[j2048b]

I canceled cable tv also. Cable tv is garbage tv. I use my laptop to connect to my tv and watch You-Tube videos. There are over a million videos on You-Tube, some are very interesting. There is also Hulu.com where you can watch some tv shows for free.

Forget that! Just download xbmc and ull have EVERYTHING FO FREE!


Sent from my iPP using Tapatrash

 

[DEADn]

My future plan is to eventually get off of FIOS because I know they are not going to keep me at the rate they are charging me now. If they did I would keep it solely for the payment and not because of FIOS.

I have not used FIOS to its fullest and I really don't care because FIOS becomes just mere entertainment and I don't have a need to entertain myself with it so much. I listen to various forms of talk radio more than tv anyway.

I did notice this about FIOS. I get about 45 channels on my outdoor antenna and all of them in HD. ON FIOS I get about 40 of them and their are channels in HD as well as in anaglog so that makes 80 channels. On top of that alot of the rest of the channels, which are solely cable. are the same way. If I were to break it down it seems that I am getting about 40 in and maybe not in HD that I don't normally get. Of those 40 there is a small fraction that I would even watch.

I wonder what will happen when next year comes around and I haggle for the same price I have now. I would rather have an I heart radio type thing in which I can listen to whatever form of talk radio they have going on for FREE.

Verizons next move is to get me to upgrade my speed now. I don't need to do that. What if I do that do they then try to get me on their wireless phone service? I have tracfone.

 

[Plumbdog]

I canceled all cable. Netflix. Red box. YouTube.


Sent from my phone using Test

 

[Zoobster]

Tell me if I am wrong in this scenario but I think Verizon is very deceptive in their business practice.



Wife and I had landline and internet until the beginning of March. Verizon offer their FIOS for a reduced price and we can check it out for 30 days. If we like it we can keep it for this new rate for 2 years. Otherwise we can discontinue this. I had assumed, I should have asked, that I would be able to go back to what we had for the same rate. WRONG.



I called Verizon today to cancel the cable and go back to the double play. It would saved us about $25 a month. The agent told me that Verizon is not offering the plan for that rate anymore and that if I did go back to that plan I would only be saving $7 a month. WHAT!!!!



It seems to me that Verizon isn't going to tell you that you will not be able to go back to your previous plan for the same price if you don't like the new plan within 30 days. I only assume this and I remember the agent telling me I could do this. I found it very deceptive. Now, if Verizon brings back this double play plan for a cheaper price I will have to pay a penalty because I will have broken the 2 year agreement with the FIOS.



Am I wrong in feeling this way?

That's the same way they and all other carriers do it. They not going to tell you unless you ask. Sorry bro it sucks. I used to sell cell phones for them. Happens all the time.


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[DEADn]

That's the same way they and all other carriers do it. They not going to tell you unless you ask. Sorry bro it sucks. I used to sell cell phones for them. Happens all the time.


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Yeah, I have learned my lesson. The only question I ever stuck to was what would the bill look like. They would tell me a money amount without taxes so I would force them to tell me the exact total but that is really smoke n mirrors anymore.

 

[Zoobster]

Yeah, I have learned my lesson. The only question I ever stuck to was what would the bill look like. They would tell me a money amount without taxes so I would force them to tell me the exact total but that is really smoke n mirrors anymore.

Ya with cell phones, tv or anything that is a service got to ask questions cause it doesn't hurt them if you don't.


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[Kaiser]

The problem really arises when they have no competitor in your area. As soon as an associate pulls you up on their screen, they get notified whether there is a competitor in your area. For instance, I cannot get FiOS, but I do get Comcast. Comcast knows this as soon as they pull me up and the address is marked as not in Verizon's network. If they do see a competitor in your area, they will work with you up to 35% more, believe it or not. To make things worse, and I do not know why this was approved with the government, is that a few years back Verizon and Comcast signed a contractual agreement stating that Comcast would limit the amount of cell phone towers it puts up as long as Verizon halts it's FiOS deployment. If that isn't Bell Telephone all over again, I don't know what it is.

 

[DEADn]

The problem really arises when they have no competitor in your area. As soon as an associate pulls you up on their screen, they get notified whether there is a competitor in your area. For instance, I cannot get FiOS, but I do get Comcast. Comcast knows this as soon as they pull me up and the address is marked as not in Verizon's network. If they do see a competitor in your area, they will work with you up to 35% more, believe it or not. To make things worse, and I do not know why this was approved with the government, is that a few years back Verizon and Comcast signed a contractual agreement stating that Comcast would limit the amount of cell phone towers it puts up as long as Verizon halts it's FiOS deployment. If that isn't Bell Telephone all over again, I don't know what it is.

I can believe that and when they get an unsuspecting consumer to say YES then it is like a fish on a hook.
There was a time when I told Verizon that all I had was an outdoor antenna and that is all I needed because I refuse to pay $135 for phone, internet, and tv like that. If I don't find something to watch then it isn't worth having the tv on. Even though this instance had me at $112 a month, initially, many of the channels I find on FIOS are blah, blah, blah. I still have my antenna hooked up because I often find it easy finding those channels then finding it on FIOS. Guess I am just used to it? Eventually I will disconnect from FIOS. I just have to be ready to jump through that Verizon hoop when it opens and I am able to do it. Otherwise I am a talk radio and public forum radio junkie more than a tv watcher.