Verizon Taking Pricing Cues From The Onion

from the life-imitates-fiction dept

Every so often, somebody starts a minor uproar on the web by not getting an obvious joke, oftentimes from the pages of the satrical newspaper The Onion. Of course, sometimes it can be quite hard to tell if The Onion is kidding, such as in a recent story called "Verizon Introduces New Charge-You-At-Whim Plan". It details a new pricing plan from the telco, with "widely varying, but always high" charges, determined through "an unjustified, arbitrary and, if you'll allow us to boast, frankly unjustifiable method". Anybody that's ever paid a phone bill can get the joke, but given Verizon's recent news that it would stop collecting a USF recovery fee to its DSL customers, but replace it with an essentially off-setting "supplier surcharge", the story hits closer to home for some people.
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  1. identicon
    Maria making pictures, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:03pm

    Onion proves it !

    Yes I agree with you this story of Verizon is a mess of it's messiest kind.
    I think Onion does a good job by summerizing the whole truth about Verizon in an artistic way.

    Thank you for sharing this story with me !

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:28pm

    Verizon has nothing on airlines when it comes to pricing.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    pandlcg, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:37pm

    Links

    Both of your first two links take you to the same page.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Guard, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:41pm

    Removing charges to make room for more charges! Yay.

    And btw, that link to the Onion article points to the preview "Man didn't get abortion joke" article, not the Verizon article.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Carlo, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:43pm

    Re: Links

    fixed, thanks.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Dee, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:46pm

    Links

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:52pm

    Hate the salon registration....

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Sanguine Dream, 21 Aug 2006 @ 2:04pm

    Sounds familiar...

    I signed up from Sprint DSL and they told me my first bill was gonna be a little larger than the usual bills. They said is was gonna be about $150-$180. No problem. So when I get my first bill of $270 I wasn't happy.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Count Porkula, 21 Aug 2006 @ 2:30pm

    Great article and oh so true.

    No one can deliver satire like the Onion.
    (remember when Xinhua picked up the Onion's article about Congress installing a retractable dome over the capitol building?) :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    krum303, 21 Aug 2006 @ 2:57pm

    Onion

    Life imitates fiction every day when it comes to The Onion's story with the great title, "Drug Deal goes Great!"
    Gotta love The Onion.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2006 @ 10:28pm

    Blasted Adblock!

    Can't even make use of the Salon pass using Firefox + Adblock... oh well?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Wizard Prang, 31 Aug 2006 @ 8:55am

    Can you say...

    link to this | view in thread ]


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