Updated: Verizon Raising Rates $15 A Month For FiOS, Here Come The Cancellations

I've been a customer of Verizon's FIOS service for more than five years and I've written a lot of posts here on the blog talking about how just good their Internet and TV service is. As good as it may be, in today's fragile economy, cable TV is a luxury for many people. The economy isn't great right now and consumers are trying to save money whenever possible and cancelling cable or downgrading their service to a lower tier is one of the many options they look at to save costs.

But apparently Verizon seems to think the economy is great right now and has decided it's time to raise rates by $15 a month. For my triple play bundle, the price is jumping from $95.99 a month to $109.99 a month. Verizon isn't offering any extra bump in speed for that price and in fact, when I called the company, they suggested I could keep the price I currently pay by downgrading my Internet speed from 25Mbps to 15Mbps. What a crappy sales pitch. So Verizon is basically saying that my rates don't have to go up, but I can now only get about half the speed I use to, for the same price I have always been paying. This is Verizon's best sales pitch? This is how they value customers who have been with them for years?

When companies make really bad mistakes like this, at a time when the economy is doing so poorly, you really have to wonder how the execs who make these decisions get to keep their jobs when they are so out of touch with the market. I guarantee that plenty of Verizon customers are going to cancel their service and switch to someone cheaper or downgrade their service and pay Verizon less each month. It's one thing to raise rates by $5 a month, but to raise them by $15 a month, that's simply bad business and it's going to come back to bite Verizon you know where.

I use to tell people all the time how good Verizon is, how they should use FiOS and that cable was really no alternative. But when Verizon thinks they can raise rates by $15 a month, and only guarantee that rate for one year, not two, they can no longer be trusted.

Update: Someone suggested I try calling a supervisor, which is always a good idea. So I called back to speak to one, but after waiting on hold for 2 hours and 9 minutes, I hung up.

Update 2: I called Verizon the next day and complained about the rate increase and they gave me a $5.99 credit each month. So at least now the rate increase is only $9 a month instead of $15 a month.