I just noticed yesterday that I had been charged $6.99 a month for the "FIOS inside Maintenance Plan" and $5.95 a month for the Verizon Internet Security Suite/3 for the past 4 years. After calling customer service to inquire about these plans, I now understand that these plans are optional and automatically added to your bill unless you personally call and have Verizon remove them from your service.
Wanted to share some thoughts and see if people out there feel the same way I do.
- I understand the Inside Maintenance Plan but I question the economical value to the customer, especially if it does not know it is paying for the plan.
- I do not understand the Internet Security Suite/3. Here I feel it is a total rip off. Nobody has been able to convey what the plan is all about and what value it adds to the customer.
- I feel that have been deceived and misled into paying for two plans I did not know I had because nobody presented the optional plans to me when I placed my order. Verizon provides these plans to you for free for 30 days, and if you don't call to cancel, the service continues automatically.
Granted, if you carefully read your bill, as the Customer Service Representative so judiciously told me, you will notice that these plans are added to your bill as separate line items and up to you to question them. I personally think that these practices are unethical, benefit the company, and at the end, it is always the customer that loses. Whether these plans have merit or not, Verizon should be clear and transparent with its customers when they place their orders. The customers must be given all the information they need about these plans so they can make rational decisions on whether they will really benefit from these plans and be given the opportunity to decline these plans when they configure the order of their new service. Furthermore, I really see no value for Verizon to throw these plans in for free for one month as there is no measurable way for the customer to determine whether these plans provide any kind or value to them. Whether deliberate or not, what ends up happening is that hundreds of thousands of customers fail to follow up after one month to cancel the plans and they ended paying for them until they realize just like me that they had been paying for something they did not want at the first place. If Verizon offers the plans for free trial to its customers, the burden should be on Verizon to follow up with the customers to determine if they want to continue the plan or not. That seems to me like a fair compromise.
