They beat me to it

This has been the week from hell at work, computer-wise. My usually slow computer and its ancient dial-up modem grew even slower this week, plus it seemed that failure of some program lurked at every corner. Fooey, with an e-y.

Already in a magnificently pissy mood, my being seemed as if it would ignite through some kind of emotional spontaneous combustion when I heard the news that Verizon Wireless planned a new $2 monthly fee for paying your bill with plastic. Looking deeper into the news, I saw it didn’t affect the old-fashioned bank checks, an automatic payment online or an electronic check. Verizon did something awhile back, perhaps maybe a year or more, that made it more difficult to use your credit or debit card. I can’t remember what it was, but it pissed me off mightily and I started using the electronic check option.

Verizon, of course, and other companies want you to use an automatic deduction from your account. I am not sure why, I know it isn’t because they want to make the consumer’s lives easier. I have been okay with the electronic check option. However, it irritated me to no end when the company announced the $2 fee this week. The simple truth is that the customer shouldn’t be forced into the car trunk and made to pay the way the company wants you to considering you have already had these options for no cost.

I had planned to write or call Verizon to complain about their new fee once this week was finally over. Now that I am officially into my New Year’s weekend, I’ve found out that Verizon has had its “Bank of America” moment. The wireless carrier announced today that because of “customer input” — make that of the loud, obscene variety — the $2 fee will not be implemented. It seems like a lot of other people mad as hell have already beat me to Verizon’s whipping post. Thanks ya’ll. You saved me some heartburn.

These large companies might just be getting the message that we, the public, are fed up with being nickle and dimed to death. The corporate giants have discovered, or at least are starting to discover, that “Gee, the customers might just decide to take their business elsewhere. That wouldn’t be so good.”

It’s something like that. Have a happy, healthy, prosperous 2012!