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Verizon: You have to pay us to give us your money

Discussion in 'News & Current Events' started by freeatlast, Dec 29, 2011.

  1. freeatlast

    freeatlast New Member

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  2. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    Oh, you mean like when you pay interest on a loan.

    Or when you get charged a fee for making too many deposits into a low fee checking account.

    Or when you get cash out of a non-network ATM.

    Or when you make a telephone payment to 100's of other businesses.

    Or when you elect to make monthly or quarterly payments on your auto insurance rather than one annual payment.

    The point is that Verizon is not doing anything extraordinary.
     
  3. freeatlast

    freeatlast New Member

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    I am sure they can use you as their PR person.
     
  4. Salty

    Salty 20,000 Posts Club
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    If you dont like it, go to another company
     
  5. preachinjesus

    preachinjesus Well-Known Member
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    Yep, that is the free market solution.
     
  6. Crabtownboy

    Crabtownboy Well-Known Member
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    The resident Republicans should love this. It is making money for a big corporation and the millionaire corporate executives.
     
  7. Robert Snow

    Robert Snow New Member

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    Is this the same free market that has raped the American worker now for years, especially since Ronald Reagan's regime?
     
  8. Earth Wind and Fire

    Earth Wind and Fire Well-Known Member
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  9. Don

    Don Well-Known Member
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    Actually, I believe this is no different than the $5 ATM charge that Bank of America has instituted, which other financial institutions gave up on due to the uproar it caused. The charge from Verizon is if you want to make a "one-time" payment online or by your Verizon phone. If you use a recurring EFT, no $2 charge. So the incentive is for you to allow them to automatically withdraw funds from your account, usually for the full amount they believe you owe them; or be "penalized" with a $2 charge each time you decide when and how much you're going to pay them.

    I also believe AT&T, Sprint, etc. will watch for the public reaction, and either institute similar fees (if the reaction is small); or use it to their advantage in advertising ("unlike other companies, we don't penalize you for online payments").
     
    #9 Don, Dec 29, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 29, 2011
  10. billwald

    billwald New Member

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    The only credit card we pay by automatic computer is Costco-AMX and they give a week to protest charges.
     
  11. preachinjesus

    preachinjesus Well-Known Member
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    Oh pulleeeze!

    You can't even stay consistent in your attempts at being a curmudgeon ;)

    The free market is the best and only way to create free people and sustain economic growth that benefits all people. Because of free markets more people are better off than they would have been for generations under any other system.
     
    #11 preachinjesus, Dec 29, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 29, 2011
  12. righteousdude2

    righteousdude2 Well-Known Member
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    Maybe Verizon Would Credit you...



    ....with a year of free services for using that high-dollar word (curmudgeon - a word I hadn't heard used in years) to describe anothers imput. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

    Seriously, I left Time Warner (it once the only game in town) for Verizon. They had a tremendous bundle package, which, unlike TW, has remained at the price they promised it would be for 24 months. I am afraid of what it will be in 14 months, as the two-year contract expires, but, for now, I am saving a bundle on their bundle.
     
  13. Robert Snow

    Robert Snow New Member

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    Oh pulleeeze yourself!

    Check out how the manufacturing sector has had flat, if not stagnant wages over the past two or three decades.
     
  14. targus

    targus New Member

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    What other economic system would have resulted in increasing wages in the manufacturing industry?
     
  15. billwald

    billwald New Member

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    The primary function is to determine what people are willing to pay for some thing. The second function is as a means of determining the most efficient way of supplying the thing.

    Take police protection, for example. Is police protection a different sort of consumer good than cars or food?

    Prior to Sir Robert Peel's invention of London's Metro Police Department, rich people had to hire their own army to protect them. The working class working in a metropolitan area had to fend for themselves. Each area had a sheriff but he was owned by the lord of the town who was owned by the king. The royalty didn't care much what happened to the common people.

    The rich and the royalty decided that it was profitable for them to have civil order in the cities. They didn't care about the common people. For the next 100 years every municipality (and counties had sheriffs on the payroll) had a local police department and it worked well. The rich people and the working class trusted their local police to protect them

    In the 1960's US society (social contract) changed. Now days people spend much more on private protection than the total cost of all federal, state, and local policing combined and the people still don't feel safe. In metro areas, many people don't trust their local police to protect them.

    Are local police departments now the most cost effective way to police the metro areas? Half the new construction seems to be expensive gated communities. These rich people obviously don't trust their local police to protect them. Should the working class people depend upon their local police? Maybe neighborhoods should be walled and gated with each neighborhood hiring its own guards.
     
  16. billwald

    billwald New Member

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    >What other economic system would have resulted in increasing wages in the manufacturing industry?

    How is this economic system going to increase wages in the USA now that 80% of the manufacturing jobs went south and very south? How will "right to work" increase wages?
    How will jobs in China increase US wages?
     
  17. mandym

    mandym New Member

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    How high should they go? Everything has a limit.
     
  18. Robert Snow

    Robert Snow New Member

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    I'm not against Capitalism; I'm against Capitalism where American workers are exploited with ultra-cheap foreign labor. Make the playing field level and I will be happy. I'm also not talking about Union jobs per say, especially Union jobs where workers are encouraged to be lazy.

    I believe we should have a robust manufacturing sector where workers put in a hard day's work and receive decent compensation. I especially like companies where workers have access to profit-sharing. This is a good incentive for workers to do their best and excel since when the company makes more money there is more available for the people who produce the product.
     
  19. Gina B

    Gina B Active Member

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    Sprint tried to charge me when I tried to pay at a Sprint store. They said it was because they were just a store, not a payment center, though they accepted payments.

    AT&T also charges to pay in person or over the phone. You can pay via their machine at AT&T instead of paying a live person, thus avoiding the fee, but half the time I go to use the machine, there ends up being a problem with it. Pretty ridiculous to charge someone for the act of paying for a product!

    I found it very insulting when it first happened to me. I go to pay a bill and they want to charge me money to do so. And it wasn't $2, it was $5 at both Sprint and AT$T and to my knowledge, it still is.

    So that makes three carriers who charge customers to pay their bills. Kinda hard to "go elsewhere if you don't like it" when everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to screw over their customers.

    Yep, very sad. Customer service is pretty much just a memory in most places. I thought the slumping economy might revive it a bit since people tend to be more loyal to places that don't treat them like dirt, but instead, the opposite has happened and companies are getting more aggressive towards customers. Weird.
     
  20. targus

    targus New Member

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    Why don't you truly participate in the free market by starting your own business rather than demanding that those who did provide you with your desired guarenteed level of income for the level of work that you are willing to do?
     
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