Verizon customers may be eligible to get a portion of a $100 million settlement from the firm for charging undisclosed fees.
Some people have received a personal notice via email or mail containing two key pieces of information: a notice ID and a confirmation code. These two details must be submitted with the online form. “Please remember to enter the full Notice ID exactly as it appears on your personalized Notice,” the website states.
Individuals who do not have the notice ID or confirmation code can use their Verizon account number and last name during the filing process.
“If you file a claim by the deadline and are eligible for a payment, your payment may be up to $100.00 for your account.” However, “the final amount may be lower depending on how long you were a Verizon subscriber and how many Settlement Class Members file valid claims. Settlement payments will be issued to valid claimants after the settlement is approved and becomes final, by check or electronic payment.”
Any settlement payment that is undeliverable or uncashed will be treated as unclaimed property.
Eligible individuals who choose not to file a claim will not only be forfeiting their settlement payments but “will give up any right you may have to sue Verizon about the issues in this lawsuit.”
Complaint Against Verizon
The lawsuit, filed last year, alleged that once customers sign up for Verizon’s postpaid wireless service, the company “uniformly charges them higher monthly rates than it advertised and promised by adding what Verizon calls an ‘Administrative Charge’ to the bill.”“The Administrative Charge is not disclosed to customers either before or when they agree to purchase wireless service from Verizon, and in fact the Administrative Charge is never adequately or honestly disclosed to customers,” the complaint read.
“Nor do Verizon customers ever agree to—or even have the opportunity to accept or reject—the Administrative Charge, which is unilaterally imposed by Verizon without its customers’ consent.”
The company began adding administrative charges to postpaid wireless customers’ bills in 2005 at the rate of $0.40 per month per phone line. In June 2022, the charge increased by 70 percent, from $1.95 to $3.30 per line.
Customers only learned about administrative charges when they received a bill. By that time, they had already signed up for the service and were “financially committed to their purchase” and couldn’t cancel without penalty.
“Verizon then omits or misrepresents the so-called Administrative Charge on its customer bills to further its scheme. Verizon’s paper bills fail to mention the Administrative Charge at all, stating instead that a customer should ‘[c]heck your online bill for all surcharges, taxes, and gov fees,’” the complaint read.
“Then on the online bill, Verizon omits the Administrative Charge from the ‘Monthly charges’ section, where it actually belongs, and instead puts it in the ‘Surcharges’ section, where it is lumped together with various government charges, taxes, and fees. Even worse, for years, Verizon explicitly and falsely stated on its monthly bills that the Administrative Charge is a surcharge imposed on subscribers to ‘cover the costs that are billed to us by federal, state or local governments.’”
According to a fact sheet issued earlier this year, Verizon had 93.9 million wireless retail postpaid connections by the end of Dec. 31, 2023.
Similar settlements have been made by telecom and big tech companies.
Almost 80 million Americans were affected by the breach. In addition to social security numbers, details like names and the driver’s licenses of customers were also compromised in the hack.
