Unlimited is dead

[pyrobling]

Originally Posted by g-funkster

It is clear that sales representatives going forward will have to warn potential buyers.

It is not clear (as it seems to deal with marketing exclusively) that Verizon will inform current customers who are paying for something they think is 'unlimited'.. I think that was the question at hand.

If the customer actually read the agreement the just readily signed they would see that if they stayed inside of the allowances of the data plan it would be equivalent to "unlimited" use since they would never hit 5gigs. However, since so many consumers complained about the term "unlimited" that is why it is being/has been removed. Now if everyone still wants to complain...start a Class Action or do something productive about it. VZW has made the appropriate change in the terminology now just have to wait a couple of weeks until the material matches the change. Since it ALWAYS had the 5gig criteria there isn't really a major change, just more widely advertised that there are certain things you can and cannot do and that you are not allowed to "hog" bandwidth.

-A

[My-Q]

How many people read their contracts? That I not for me to worry about. It is the individual consumers responsibility to understand what their user agreement is. Now, ask me if I have read my entire contract. Yes. Now, ask me if I understood my contract. No, not in it's entirety. Is that my fault? No. That honor belongs to the myriad attorneys who work for Verizon Wireless.

It makes no difference to me how the wording is changed as long as it does not effect my bill. I will continue to do business like I was getting away with what I can...JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

Is information a bad thing? It is true that knowledge is power. However, the wrong information, incomplete information or premature information can be a bad thing. Businesses are notorious about not providing proper training for all of their employees. As we have seen with VZW, not all employees at VZW know what they are talking about. We have no idea when we call VZW who are the good employees who know what they are talking about.

If you are going to put out information about VZW, be prepared for the questions, concerns and complaints. I would check with my policy and procedures about releasing company information before general publications. Some companies terminate employees for advanced information.

[pyrobling]

Good to know and when you are employeed by VZW...feel free to correct me.

In the meantime when I get an email that says "effective immediately" then WOW its immediate. Therefore everyone needs to be informed immediately. If it is something that I shouldn't inform customers about then I wouldn't tell you. If it says don't release yet, then I wouldn't tell you. Your bill doesn't change, simply the wording to avoid upset and lawsuit happy customers.

In regards to the contract, to blatantly admit that you don't understand it isn't wise. Ask your rep for clarification. I wouldn't sign something that I hadn't fully read yet....wait...


I, ____________, agree to turn over all my material assests by signing below.

X_______________


Ok...don't read that just sign please

-A

[My-Q]

The issue is...I just called VZW about this change. The person I talked to denied any change. The customer would be notified if there were any changes, IN ADVANCE.

Now, with the conflict of information, what is a consumer to do? Who does a consumer believe? I'm not really picking on you Adam. I know you are trying to help us poor VZW customers. But, information isn't necessarily a good thing. At times, it's better to be ignorant than enlightened.

[gmardre]

Verizon Wireless Slowly, Quietly, Backing Away From Misleading Claims Of Unlimited Service

from the shhhh...-don't-tell-anyone dept

For years, Verizon Wireless has been pushing its EVDO wireless internet service as "unlimited" -- but then cutting off users if they passed some unknown, unstated "cap." When pushed on this, a Verizon Wireless rep actually said "It's unlimited amounts of data for certain types of data." And... if you happened to go over a certain amount of total data, then they insisted you absolutely must have been using it for "other" types of data -- even if they had no actual proof. For a while it was thought that the cap was 10gigs, but later it was revealed that it was merely 5gigs of data per month -- which these days, really isn't all that much for some people. We've always wondered why no one ever hit Verizon Wireless with a false advertising suit over the claim of "unlimited," but it never happened. However, it appears that Verizon Wireless has been slowly backing away from the unlimited claim, and is now putting the 5gig limit into the terms of service. They still do use "Unlimited" in their press releases, but seem to be backing away from it in their ads. There's nothing wrong with limiting the total bandwidth that can be used, so as long as the company was clear about it. It's unclear why it took years for Verizon Wireless to decide that actually being (somewhat) honest about what it was selling was a good idea.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070404/141145.shtml

[Suture]

Originally Posted by My-Q

The issue is...I just called VZW about this change. The person I talked to denied any change. The customer would be notified if there were any changes, IN ADVANCE.

I am a former Verizon (and Bell Atlantic) employee (network architect). The problem with the above is that Verizon is horrible about communication between departments. Seriously, the right hand never knows what the left is doing.

For instance, when we were making changes to the ADSL network, we ran through some test cases/scenarios. We quickly found that their tech support, customer service, logistics, and sales systems were not linked in any way. This made it dreadfully difficult to get information across the board. Just trying to setup e-mail groups was impossible because we couldn't even find points of contact for certain Exchange servers; nothing was globally managed, it was like silos were everywhere.

From what I understand it's gotten better. I am a happy Verizon customer, for the most part, and the one or two times I've had to contact customer service/technical support, my issues were resolved quickly and by courteous personnel.

I've come nowhere near the 5GB limit, so I really don't care if they change that portion since it doesn't affect me. But, I can see where this is certainly going to cause a backlash from some of the customers. This issue has already hit Digg, Slashdot, etc. and I see articles popping up all over the net.

[qnoob]

more links:

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2007/04...5gb-per-month/
http://torrentfreak.com/verizon-bans...online-gaming/
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/0...n_says_un.html

[pyrobling]

Looks like what CyberNet wrote 2 days ago backs up what I said 1 week ago....this must mean I was correct....interesting enough that the masses keep quiet after someone other then me says it. Now let's see if the rest of what I said is correct, since it came from VZW corp, and we'll start seeing the changes taking place and material TO NOTIFY THE DEMANDING MASSES come out by May 15 like I stated previously.

-A

[Utah Q User]

who of us really goes over 5GB/mo? seriously now.

[g-funkster]

Actually, it's funny because if you look into all of those articles, the story is some cybernet blogger finally read the TOS and found the 5GB info on there. But that's been there since at least December.