Verizon Pays Up To Settle ‘Mystery Charges’

Verizon is writing a very big check.

In a Federal Communications Commission consent decree, the telecommunications giant was fined a record $25 million and agreed to refund $52.8 million to customers who found small "mystery charges" on their wireless bills.

The federal regulator found that Verizon may have overcharged as many as 15 million wireless customers for its pay-as-you-go data plans. The extra charges were the result of unauthorized data transfers from applications.

"Verizon Wireless works very hard to simplify the wireless experience for customers and to ensure that customer bills are accurate," the company said in a statement. "Nonetheless, internal billing processes can be complex and, in this case, we made inadvertent billing mistakes. We accept responsibility for those errors, and apologize to our customers who received accidental data charges on their bills."

10-month investigation

The agreement wraps up a nearly year-long probe into a series of $1.99 per megabyte charges that showed up on bills of Verizon customers who had not subscribed to a data plan. The FCC began looking into the matter in response to consumer complaints.

"Today's settlement requires Verizon Wireless to make meaningful business reforms, prevent future overcharges, and provide consumers clear, easy-to-understand information about their choices," said Michele Ellison, chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau.

Verizon said it is issuing credits and refunds on its own initiative and "because it is the right thing to do for our customers."

"Fixing this for our customers has been our aim since last year, as we stated publicly at that time," the company said.

Verizon had previously announced that it would reimburse about 15 million current and former customers who may have been mistakenly billed. It said it would also will provide targeted information about data usage and tracking to new and existing customers, in both English and Spanish; establish a special internal team to track, identify and address customer data usage complaints; and provide additional training on data charge and credit issues to all of our customer-facing customer care employees.

Who gets a refund?

Who is eligible for a refund? Verizon wireless customers who do not have data plans and who pay for data usage on a per megabyte basis. Verizon said it is currently notifying eligible current and former customers that it is applying credits to their accounts or sending refunds in October and November.