Verizon Is About To Increase Its Fees: Here's What You Should Know
The past two years have been economically trying for many people and devastating for some businesses, particularly those that had to lay off employees or shut down. The ones that remained the same were bound to change sooner or later. Prices have gone up, not just for the goods you buy once but also for the services you pay for monthly. Of course, price increases are always frowned upon, especially since they burden already taxed consumers. It's no surprise, then, that Verizon's newly announced price increase set for June was met with a bit of apprehension and suspicion about the reason for the change.
To be fair, Verizon isn't alone in making price adjustments, and it hasn't increased its prices in two years. In fact, some might even view AT&T's April 2022 price increase announcement as more drastic and egregious. The latter carrier revealed that customers on old plans would see a $6 hike on a single line and $12 for families, citing rising costs and higher wages as reasons, according to Bloomberg. Curiously, it left its Unlimited plans untouched, which could be its way of pushing its customers away from older subscriptions.
Verizon has been a bit less forthcoming about its reasons for the price increase (via The Verge), but that writing has been on the wall since last month. CEO Vans Vestberg hinted as much in his last earnings call, mentioning how the company is ready to do what it can to fight inflation and other economic difficulties. Apparently, those include charging both consumers and business customers a bit more.
What Verizon customers can expect
Starting with bills that will be sent out in June, customers will see an additional $1.35 charge per voice line filed under "Administrative Fee," bringing the total to $3.30 per voice line. To be clear, this only applies to each voice line per account, so data-only lines won't be affected. Subscribers who have just iPads and no phones, for example, won't see any change in their bills.
Beginning June 16, some business customers will be charged an additional $2.20 per month for mobile data plans, while basic service plans will go up by $0.98. There are no fixed-rate plans for this class of customers, though, so Verizon still has some wiggle room to negotiate for higher prices once a business customer's old service plan expires. It almost sounds shady, but that's how things roll on that side of the fence.
Of course, there are also misgivings about these price increases, which come at an inopportune time for consumers who may also be struggling with the economic repercussions of the pandemic. Some have also suspected that AT&T's and Verizon's price increases are taking advantage of T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint to test the waters while they can, using inflation and other economic factors as a cover — though, of course, that remains speculation.