Seems like only yesterday we were in a pet about Bank of America’s having the nerve to impose a hefty tax on use of their debit card. It’s not like they weren’t already gouging consumers with their monthly checking account fee structure, only slightly offset by the trace element of interest you were accruing on your savings account. Oh, I know, I know. The poor old bank had to do something after those meanies in Congress told them they couldn’t be so darned usurious towards those who don’t quite manage to pay their credit card balances off monthly. So, who could they turn to other than those upright, non-charging, debit-using citizens.
Although I am, I’m somewhat embarrassed to reveal, a BofA customer, I was not one of those who joined in the hue and outcry against the rapacious megabank. I do use my debit card, but pretty much only when I buy groceries at Whole Food. Since there’s a BofA cash machine next door to Whole, my workaround was going to be making a stop at the ATM and taking out the cash – for free – and paying for my groceries with folding green. But enough BofA customers took up torch and pitchfork – or, rather, the 21st century social media equivalents – twittering and blogging – and forced them to back down.
Given all this, you’d have thought that Verizon might have thought twice, or even three times, before they decided to levy a $2 convenience fee on those who want to pay their bills on line.
As with BofA, while I am a VZ customer, I was not one of those who was going to be victimized by the $2 surcharge. I already use the automatic payment option – direct from my BofA account to VZ’s coffers - that they’re trying to drive people toward with the new $2 fee. At least I don’t think I was one of those targeted by the convenience fee. Now that I read the details, I’m not so sure. Maybe I was going to be gouged because BofA was turn-around-gouging VZ to get at my money.
And “convenience fee”? Talk about one of my all-time favorite euphemisms. I especially like it when it’s imposed by those who sell tickets for something or other, and who jack you for the privilege of printing the ticket on your home printer, rather than having a cardboard version sent to your home via US Mail – for free.
Anyway, Verizon went ahead with their bone-headed move by announcing the new surcharge, only to get torn to shreds by “the people.”
Once vox pop was heard loud and clear, VZ kind of started to reposition their announcement as the world’s largest unmanaged focus group. Once the people had dialed up and dialed in their fee-rage, VZ heard things loud and clear. Apparently there weren’t that many no-bars, dead zones out there.
The upshot is that Verizon looks rapacious and, on the heels of the BofA brouhaha, really and truly dumb.
Don’t these behemoth enterprises have all kinds of marketing folks to take the pulse of “the people” before they announce something like this, in the current economic, political, and social climate (Occupy Tea Party). Not to mention the no-going-back-to-the-good-old-days role that social media, in all its glorious ubiquity and immediacy, plays. Did the folks who do this kind of thing get laid off? Are they just plain dunderheads? Or is this yet another indicator that the world really has changed utterly.
I can forgive a stodgy old bank for not getting this. But shouldn’t Verizon have figured out that its customers were going to take to the wireless airwaves? What do they think folks are doing with all those smartphones, all that wifi, all that 24/7?
No comments:
Post a Comment