[HN Gopher] Verizon to keep charging controversial fee despite $...
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Verizon to keep charging controversial fee despite $100M settlement
Author : kurthr
Score : 36 points
Date : 2024-01-15 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| EMCymatics wrote:
| Untouchable.
| gruez wrote:
| In this case they haven't been convicted of any wrongdoing, nor
| was there any precedent that what they did was wrong. Given the
| above, them continuing to do whatever they were doing seems
| like the justice system working as intended? Obviously many
| people think they're guilty of something, but in this case it
| seems like the plaintiff's case was weak rather than verizon
| being "Untouchable".
| josefritz wrote:
| They paid a 100M settlement. Pretty sure that's not a
| charitable donation.
| gruez wrote:
| That makes as much sense as "he agreed to a plea bargain;
| he must be guilty of something".
| ok_dad wrote:
| Why are you defending a billion dollar company? Is
| Verizon so hard up that they need random people to defend
| their shit business practices? I don't get why you're so
| invested in this morally reprehensible practice.
| gruez wrote:
| >Why are you defending a billion dollar company?
|
| "Why are you defending an accused
| rapist/pedophile/murderer?"
|
| >Is Verizon so hard up that they need random people to
| defend their shit business practices? I don't get why
| you're so invested in this morally reprehensible
| practice.
|
| I'm not sure how you got the impression I support "their
| shit business practices". If you read my comments more
| carefully you'll see I was only arguing that from both a
| practical and legal standpoint, they don't have to change
| their behavior. I did not make any sort of normative
| claim.
| wnevets wrote:
| > "he agreed to a plea bargain; he must be guilty of
| something".
|
| What do you think they would be pleading to?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And the cost of the settlement will be recovered with the
| higher fees.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Could another party replay this case, and they would have to
| settle again?
| gruez wrote:
| The article says that they ended up changing the language
| in their marketing/contracts, presumably to make it more
| lawsuit-proof. The plaintiff lawyers also settled, which
| suggests their case isn't a slam dunk. Given the two
| factors suing again is probably a very risky proposition.
| danaris wrote:
| They "haven't been convicted of any wrongdoing" because we
| have developed a _detestable_ habit, in this country, of
| allowing--in some cases even encouraging--large companies and
| wealthy individuals to simply _settle_ major lawsuits
| "without admitting any wrongdoing" rather than forcing them
| to actually, yes, _admit that lying and taking money they
| weren 't owed and didn't need_ (or whatever other particular
| awful thing a given suit is about) is wrong, and requiring
| them to change their behavior.
|
| All because it would be more expensive to actually see
| justice carried out.
|
| It _really_ makes me wonder just how expensive it would be,
| in net, to nationalize and /or break up companies like
| Verizon, and force them to be good corporate citizens either
| by running them directly, or by cutting them down to a much
| more manageable size and actually giving them meaningful
| competition again for the first time in far, far too long.
| gruez wrote:
| >They "haven't been convicted of any wrongdoing" because we
| have developed a detestable habit, in this country, of
| allowing--in some cases even encouraging--large companies
| and wealthy individuals to simply settle major lawsuits
| "without admitting any wrongdoing" rather than forcing them
| to actually, yes, admit that lying and taking money they
| weren't owed and didn't need (or whatever other particular
| awful thing a given suit is about) is wrong, and requiring
| them to change their behavior.
|
| Except in this case it's not really clear that taking them
| to trial would result in a guilty verdict against them.
| It's also possible that they get off 100% scot free
| instead. I don't know about you, but if I was a consumer
| I'd rather get a paycheck in the mail right now, than
| having both sides' lawyers rack up thousands more billable
| hours (which will be paid from the settlement and/or future
| bills) for an uncertain promise of a bigger paycheck and
| them being declared as guilty.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Not a Verizon customer, but any regular consumer is only
| going to be getting $20 or $30, max. If they are guilty,
| then letting them buy their way out of it without
| admitting it is BS; if they're not, then letting them be
| shaken down without being at fault is BS. Reducing
| everything to expected value and probabilistic
| calculations means that an ever-increasing volume of
| commercial and legal decision-making is based on bluff
| rather than principle.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The "detestable habit" is just the nature of an adversarial
| court system. If both the defendant and plaintiff agree to
| drop the matter, how else can you continue the case? Do you
| have the judge start the Verizon inquisition[0] and become
| (or appoint) a new plaintiff? Who's going to pay for their
| time?
|
| It sounds like what you want is the FTC to prosecute the
| case in lieu of the plaintiffs. That's possibly viable, but
| they also kind of have their hands full with Google.
|
| [0] Yes, the alternative to an adversarial court system is
| _literally the Spanish inquisition!_
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The adversarial legal approach is highly overrated.
| j-bos wrote:
| One thing that rubs me the wrong but same way about stories like
| this, certain layoffs, ads in paid subscriptions, the sales of
| personal data, and shoddy-safe planes falling out of the sky, is
| the insincerity of it. Verizon is charging a separate hidden fee,
| supposedly to pay for gov't fees, but it's not a gov't mandated
| fee. Anyone with eyes open can smell the double talk. It's
| tiresome to constantly be lied to and need to be guarding against
| institutional pickpockets.
| eek2121 wrote:
| What ads and what sale of data? Ars does not sell or give away
| paid subscriber data, and they certainly don't show ads to paid
| subscribers.
| danaris wrote:
| I don't see anywhere in the GP a suggestion that anything in
| their criticism is directed at Ars Technica...
| j-bos wrote:
| Sorry for the lack of clarity. It was a general comment about
| certain trends I've been noticing and not specific to any one
| offender in particular. Certainly not Ars, I'm not familiar
| with them on that level.
| landedgentry wrote:
| It's exhausting. I wish there were a way to quantify this,
| because it feels more and more unabashed, egregious, common and
| normalized.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Maybe they'll change course if we throw enough adjectives at
| them.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| In my opinion, advertised prices should always be inclusive of
| taxes and fees. Anything less is cost obfuscation. It's like the
| ol' eBay scam of 1 cent items that have the whole cost of the
| item built into the shipping just to confuse people.
| 6493747485 wrote:
| The argument against this, specifically with regard to taxes,
| is that baking in the tax conceals the impact of that tax from
| the consumer. Obviously this primarily applies to sales taxes
| since production taxes aren't consumer facing (even if they
| impact consumers) but it's still better imo than simply not
| having that information since most laws are already fire and
| forget type affairs and so their costs can compound over time
| to degrees that aren't as immediately obvious to the public if
| they aren't displayed frequently and visibly.
| rvba wrote:
| Goods distibuted in samw geographical area generally have
| similar prices even after transportation, so shop in county A
| that has lower tax, will be cheaper than same shop 1
| kilometer (1 mile) in county B, that has higher tax. Why
| would the shop want to hide the tax?
|
| In EU shops are made to show price per kilogram / liter too.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I agree that taxes need to be applied separately so the
| public knows how much they are paying in taxes. Also, if you
| required including the tax, it would not be possible for most
| sites to advertise any prices without the user creating an
| account, providing their shipping address and logging in,
| since tax rates vary by country, county, even municipality.
| thefurdrake wrote:
| Please explain in excruciating detail the need for an
| account to provide a single input box for zip code to just
| calculate fees? I need a serious breakdown of the logic
| behind this position, because from where I'm sitting, it
| seems to me like you could determine someone's "country,
| county, even municipality" with that single piece of data
| and no more.
| toast0 wrote:
| Zip codes aren't specific enough to determine tax rates.
| Zip codes are assigned by the post office to facilitate
| delivery of mail, not to determine which taxing districts
| an address belongs in. You really need the whole address
| sometimes. Because the city name on the mailing address
| often indicates the city, but not always. And some taxing
| districts don't follow city boundaries anyway. And you
| need a process to handle exceptions, because boundaries
| are complex and sometimes mistakes are made.
| thefurdrake wrote:
| Fair enough! However...
|
| I'm still not seeing why that experience requires an
| account, so while this response is academically
| interesting, it doesn't actually address the purpose of
| my comment. Any reason why these calculations can't be
| performed without an account? Any reason why needing to
| enter the street address is functionally different from
| needing to enter the zipcode for this functionality, or
| were you just attempting to add detail/nuance?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I'm not objecting to knowing what the taxes are, I'm
| objecting to companies being able to hide the taxes to make
| switching look like a better deal than it actually is.
|
| If Verizon advertises, say, $50/mo cellphone service, they're
| actually going to charge you an extra $15 or so, but they
| won't tell you what you're paying in taxes until you've
| actually signed up for the service and paid the switching
| costs. I want Verizon to advertise $65/mo ($50/mo base +
| $15/mo fees).
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Or they won't tell you until you receive your first bill,
| when it's far too late to cancel the contract.
| toast0 wrote:
| Some phone providers just eat the taxes, and that's fine at
| some level, but also problematic if you're on a $15/month
| plan and your city charges a $5/month per line telecom tax
| and other cities don't. And I'm not a fan of hiding
| mandatory uniform fees.
|
| But how does Verizon run a national advertised price and
| include the taxes when telephone taxes vary based on your
| city, county, and state, and sometimes which part of the
| city/county.
|
| If they mail it to you, then sure, they should be able to
| calculate it assuming your main service address is the same
| as your mailing address. But even if they have it in the
| window at their shop, they could include the taxes as if
| you lived at the shop, but actual taxes will be based on
| your service address.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Ahahaha, like retailers care about me so much and want me to
| be more active in local politics. That could be achieved by
| including the information on the receipt, but omitting it
| from the advertised price is a low grade scam.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yes, the full price needs to be listed. At the same time, if
| there is the need to disaggregate the items so you can see
| where your money is going. For example, how much is tax that
| goes to the government (and might be less if you lived in a
| different jurisdiction), and how much goes to the company?
| Among the latter, how much is for the base service versus
| addons (that you might not need)?
| jjeaff wrote:
| That one penny eBay truck may have been meant to confuse people
| in some cases, but it was more likely that it was a way to get
| around eBay fees. For a time, ebay only charged their 15% based
| on the sale price, exclusive of the shipping cost. Once eBay
| noticed a lot of people doing this, they changed their fee
| structure and I very soon after started seeing a lot fewer
| penny items with high shipping cost.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Having lived in other countries, the US habit of 'nickel and
| diming' every sale with taxes and fees that aren't fully
| announced until payment is one of the most annoying cultural
| failings. Even governments do it; I recently bought a tree
| removal permit and my city tacked on a ~15% 'technology fee'.
| This after I wasted a good hour dealing with the absolutely
| awful website for the permit application - having to enter the
| same information on multiple pages by hand, broken address
| lookup, ugliest imaginable design and layout.
| kencausey wrote:
| I won't defend most of the practices but sales tax is, in at
| least some US states, required by law to be listed
| separately.
| mrandish wrote:
| This judgement only settles overcharges through Nov 8th. If
| Verizon keeps charging this discretionary undisclosed fee,
| hopefully enterprising class action lawyers will make suing them
| for settlements an ongoing business model. Future judgements
| against the same behavior might also make judges amenable to
| increasing punitive damages on top of recovery of actual damages.
| I suspect that might eventually "encourage" Verizon to reevaluate
| the cost/benefit of continuing this practice.
| more_corn wrote:
| Because they make more than $100m by keeping it.
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