If you are an existing Verizon customer and feel that for some reasons this month’s bill has been “flabbergasted” by extra charges, then there is no reason for you to worry, as most Verizon customers were charged extra due to a software glitch and you will be refunded.
However the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will not let Verizon get away with this that easily. According to FCC an estimated amount of $50million has been charged as “mystery fees”
The main culprit to the overcharging of these fees has mainly been blamed to a software defect and not human error. This defect alone has cost more than 15 million customers in overcharged false charges of up to $2 to $6. However Verizon has assured that all customers that have been affected will get a full refund of the charges.
According to Verizon “The majority of the data sessions involved minor data exchanges caused by software built into their phones; others included accessing certain Web links, which should not have incurred charges, we have addressed these issues to avoid unintended data charges in the future.”
However the surprising part of this entire saga is that FCC has also previously known such overcharging cases of Verizon where it had overcharged its customers in January as well. Verizon has not been able to refund customers since then.
According to FCC chairman “We’re gratified to see Verizon agree to finally repay its customers. But questions remain as to why it took Verizon two years to reimburse its customers and why greater disclosure and other corrective actions did not come much, much sooner.”
Let’s hope now we don’t get to see these overcharges in our next month’s bill.
