Verizon has settled a nine-month investigation into deceptive business practices by the office of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
Under the agreement, Verizon will pay $150,000 in fines and penalties, while reimbursing 13,000 affected customers for purchased laptop aircards and tethered handsets that had services terminated at an estimated total of $1,000,000.
Verizon at one point advertised BroadbandAccess service as “Unlimited”, which has since been clarified to mean 5GB in total traffic per month with no allowances for streaming audio/video and P2P traffic while Verizon reserved the right to disconnect or slow down heavy users who were considered to be using too much data.
Beware of Verizon’s deceptive business practices! I recently attempted to leave Verizon in search of a more resonable long distance rate. Upon doing so Verizon solicited me with a deal that was too good to be true! They offered me a bundle package with my Direct TV service, DSL and long distance to save about $20 a month along with $200.00 in American express gift cards. The $20 a month savings didn’t quite sway me but with the addition if the $200 in gift cards this seemed like a good deal. Little did I know at the time, because it was never explained to me by the sales person, that this was a limited use gift card, only usable at certain establishments! When I voiced my outrage at this deception to the supervisor; Miss Pettit, in customer service, I was told there was nothing that they would do. No apology, no explanation as to why they think it’s ok to not disclose all the information at the time of solicitation and no satisfaction to me the custome. So I am forced to air my dissapointment with Verizon publicly to let peolple know that Verizon does dirty business! Without the offer of these gift cards I would never have switched back to Verizon.