Boycott of Verizon Wireless

Boycott Originator

jolt | Email this user

Boycott Title

Shame on Verizon

Boycott Description

Verizon's standard business practices have long promoted their profit margins at the expense of ripping off their customers.  All to often customers are unaware they have purchased phones stripped of features (by Verizon) that are otherwise standard from the manufacturer.  All to often customers are signed up for bandwidth plans in which Verizon has misled customers to believe they will be billed at 1/8 - 1/10 of the actual bandwidth rate.  Unfortunately if you are reading this you like many who have come before you are likely a victim of Verizon's standard business practices.  You now have a choice to make - you can choose to accept Verizon's business shortcomings and their impact on you or you can choose not to do business with Verizon until they change their standards.  By joining this boycott you send a message to Verizon and others that you will not support their continued poor business decisions - make the right choice and take a stand.

Many people assume they are stuck with Verizon since there is a early termination fee (ETF) if the contract is cancelled prior contract term expiration; however there are many reasons the contract can be cancelled as defined in the contract which may apply to your circumstances.  Please see these links to learn more about options you may have:

• Tutorial: Get Out of Your Verizon Contract Without a Fee
• Terminating a Wireless Contract

An entire boycott is only called for if the problems with Verizon are wide-spread affecting/injuring many customers.  So next we provide examples along with links to information supporting our primary issues with Verizon:

• Crippled Phone Features
  For the unfamiliar a quick google search can yield results of many people complaining about phones features crippled by Verizon.  Unfortunately Verizon is not alone in consistently having cell phone manufacturers disable certain features for the benefit of their bottom line.  In further defense of Verizon the customer can return the phone in the first 30 days for a refund in the event it did not meet their requirements - crippled features or not.  However Verizon in our view takes the phone crippling business strategy the furthest and has done so for a long time.  Here are some common examples with references although they are my no means exhaustive:
  
  • Disabling GPS
    As a US citizen you paid taxes to put the the GPS satellites in orbit and pay for their ongoing maintenance every year.  Then you paid for a phone that supported GPS via a GPS chip (you paid for that chip).  But that is not enough.  Verizon wants you to pay more so they decided to remove the GPS capability that came with the phone that you paid for so that you can pay a monthly fee to use VZ Navigator.  Needless to say there have been class action lawsuits over this issue - you can learn more here.
    
    
  • Disabling Bluetooth Features
    Verizon has commonly disabled bluetooth features such as OBEX on phones supporting the protocol (i.e. Treo 700w V710 etc.).  There have been class action lawsuit filed against Verizon because of this and you can learn more here.
    
    
• Bandwidth Billing Errors
  Verizon has widespread bandwidth billing problems - generally erring on the side of drastically overbilling customers.  From what we can tell this seems to largely stem from customer support/sales representatives who have no idea what their actual bandwidth rates are.  Nonetheless this billing problem persists (the problem has not been fixed for years now).  See this video to get an idea how badly they misquote their customers.  What really makes their billing egregious is that if you do not notice the error in time they will not credit your account for the amount they overcharged you.  In some cases Verizon has acknowledged they have overcharged customers in excess of $1000 and refused to credit the full amount back.

Boycott Demands

We demand that Verizon stop overbilling and misquoting customers on bandwidth rates credit back the accounts of customers affected by bandwidth overbilling and stop removing features like GPS from phones.