You have to wonder why, at a time when most operators are espousing the virtues of improving the experience of customers, some seem hell-bent on upsetting them. And, it appears the best way to do that is to charge them for something they don’t expect to be charged for.

 

Take the example of US mobile mega operator, Verizon. It decided that its customers should pay a ‘convenience fee’ of $2 (€1.56) for making payments online or over the phone. Apparently, customers did not think that this extra chit was at all ‘convenient’ and the backlash from them has forced Verizon to withdraw the charge. In just one day, over 60,000 customers reportedly signed a petition against the fee. The situation also attracted the interest of the regulator, the FCC.

 

The new fee was to go into effect in mid-January, and would have affected all those who weren’t enrolled in Verizon’s automatic bill payment system. With over 90 million customers, the company stood to rake in some serious cash with the fees, but it could have also lost a lot of customers over it.

 

Verizon’s logic for applying the charge was pretty sound. From its point of view: “The fee will help allow us to continue to support these single bill payment options in these channels and is designed to address costs incurred by us for only those customers who choose to make single bill payments in alternate payment channels.”

This type of charge is certainly not unique to Verizon, and many operators in other countries also levy fees for costly payment processing options, usually in the hope of moving customers to less costly options. Australian telcos have long levied check-processing fees, for example. Sadly, not all customers want to change their long-trusted method of payment, regardless of the operator’s intentions or costs, and any attempt to force them is likely to result in the response, and subsequent bad publicity, Verizon received.