Your Verizon Wireless bill is about to increase by a small amount, courtesy of the numbers shown in small type. The carrier is ratcheting up two of the three surcharges it adds to phone bills, months after announcing a rate freeze that excluded add-on fees like these.
The total increase on a voice-capable plan should be just 30 cents, going from a Reddit post flagged Thursday by Phone Arena. In the coming weeks, the “Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge” will go from $3.50 a line to $3.78 a line, while the “Regulatory Charge” will inch up from $0.19 to $0.21.
A company support document says the former charge “helps defray and recover certain direct and indirect costs we or our agents incur,” such as those involved in “complying with regulatory and industry obligations and programs,” property taxes, and network operations and maintenance costs. Verizon last raised it in December.
That page says the latter “helps defray various government charges we pay including government number administration and license fees.” If you think that sounds like the administrative charge covering the expense of “complying with regulatory and industry obligations and programs,” we can’t say you’re wrong.
A third fee to fund the government-mandated Universal Service Fund (recently upheld in a Supreme Court ruling) remains unchanged.
In a statement, Verizon confirmed that those two surcharges are going up but did not offer specific numbers.
“To continue delivering the best customer experience on America’s best 5G network and industry-leading services and tools that save our customers’ time and money, we’re making some adjustments,” publicist Holland Behn emailed. “These adjustments are in line with market rates and allow us to continue to provide top-tier products and services with the vast majority of consumer customers seeing an increase of less than 30 cents.”
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Behn did not clarify the discrepancy between the 30-cent increase outlined on Reddit and the statement’s “less than 30 cents” phrase.
Per that Reddit post and comments from other users, people opening a new line of service will face an additional expense, a $5 increase in the carrier’s “Activation Fee” that takes it to $40.
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And users of 5G-equipped tablets and mobile hotspots on Verizon data-only plans get a separate round of increases: $5 more on tablet plans ($2.50 for subscribers on phone plans that offer a 50% break on that second line, as confirmed in an email to PCMag’s Eric Zeman), plus a much bigger hike in the administrative charge that takes it from $1.60 per line to $3.97.
This is the sort of thing that industry observers had suspected would happen after Verizon’s April announcement of a three-year price lock for new signups that excluded “taxes, fees, surcharges, additional plan discounts or promotions, and third-party services.”
And it’s not the only irritating news for Verizon customers. Droid Life highlighted another cutback on Thursday: the removal of a free subscription to either Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass that Verizon introduced as a perk in 2021 on its no-longer-sold Get More and Play More plans.
Customers unhappy with these changes can try bringing their complaints to the new customer-service channels Verizon announced in June. The marketing campaign for that featured full-page newspaper ads in which Verizon consumer CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath encouraged customers to email him directly at [email protected]; we have to wonder what his inbox may look like now.
About Rob Pegoraro
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