How Much Does Verizon Fios Cost? I Can’t Get a Straight Answer
Bundles for internet, TV, and phone service might seem appealing when you sign up, but they’re an intentionally complicated nightmare if you want to trim what you’re paying for down the line.
I’ve had gigabit fiber optic service from Verizon for two years, and the service itself has been excellent. There’s just one problem: the huge brick of a set-top box sitting in the back of my entertainment center. No, not the surprisingly underwhelming 5G set-top box; it’s the big, old one that comes with Fios TV service.
When I first signed up for Fios, I wanted the gigabit service. At the time, the sales rep told me gigabit was only available with TV service. I found this to be deeply annoying, but I wanted better service, so I agreed to the bundle.
Two years later, I was no longer locked into a contract, but my bill had ballooned from $100 to $130. So it seemed like a good time to cancel the TV service. Surely an internet-only plan would be cheaper.
That didn’t happen, and it took half an hour for it not to happen. Because not only are Verizon sales representatives pressured to hard sell bundles, but if you try to break out of that bundle, a byzantine framework of “discounts” and “promotions” are still present on your account to make getting any clear, informed price structure virtually impossible.
Here’s how the call went. I asked to cancel my TV service, assuming just gigabit Fios would naturally be less than paying for both it and TV. I also wanted to see if there were any promotions or incentives I could maybe retention-talk my way into, because Verizon has a promotion for a year of free Disney+ and that sounded like a nice bonus if possible.
Immediately, the rep started framing the entire interaction as a way to get me to keep the Fios and TV bundle. I asked for the price of just gigabit. He said he’d check on the price of both. I said I just wanted gigabit. He said he understood, and he would still check on the price of both. Finally, after several minutes, he said I was getting the best possible price already-$130 per month for gigabit Fios and TV service I haven’t touched. I asked again for a price for just gigabit.
After a minute, he had a number. It would be $120 per month. That wasn’t quite the savings I was hoping to hear, so I asked what the 400/400Mbps plan would cost.
After another minute, he had a number. It would be $100 per month. Okay, not great, but it would be a bit of monthly savings, so let’s go with that.
He prepared to put the request through, still prodding me with the hard sell, saying over and over it would be a better discount to spend just a bit more and get the TV bundle with gigabit. I was starting to feel very frustrated at this point, and it was coming through on the call. The sales rep said he was just reading what the system was telling him.
This is an important note. I don’t blame the sales rep. I wouldn’t blame any low-level phone jockey on the other end, because this is their job, and they’re committed to certain scripts on systems that give them very limited options. This is a nightmare labyrinth of hard-sell garbage crafted by higher-ups with the very intention of making the process difficult.
I vacillated between gigabit and the slower rate, not happy with either option, but eventually settled on keeping gigabit and saving $10 per month. This was when the sales rep mentioned a two-year commitment.
Wait, what?
I’ve been on a month-to-month plan with no commitment for a year. Now, trying to get rid of a set-top box and TV service I never use, I found out half an hour into the call that my rate would actually be $140 unless I wanted to be locked into a two-year agreement.
I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t particularly polite, but in my defense, I didn’t dissolve into a maelstrom of expletive-ridden verbal abuse, either. I simply told the sales rep to not make any changes to my account, grumbled “you win, for now” under my breath, and ended the call.
Then I opened this document and a few Verizon tabs to do some research myself. And you know what I found? Getting a clear picture of what your Fios bill will look like long-term is impossible.
When you’re a new customer and you’re shopping, you’re shown only first-time promotional rates (at the moment, $79.99 for gigabit Fios with a three-year agreement). It says that the price will go up after that, but it doesn’t say to what. Maybe you can get that number in the fine print when you sign the agreement, but that isn’t an informed decision until the very last moment with the very smallest text.
When you’re a long-time customer and you’re looking for service pricing, you’re shown a complex series of tiers and discounts that all add and subtract and spin around until the final price you’re given looks very different from any other number you saw before you started clicking. And even when you wrestle with sales reps on the phone, it takes minutes and multiple pleas to get hard numbers from them.
After poking around my current account page, I have some questions:
- What is a “special speed bonus?”
- Why does it say it takes $50 off of my monthly bill until November of next year?
- Where’s the original price?
- Why is there absolutely no way from my account setup page to see what the price of any package would be without TV service?
- Or even a lower-tier TV service like the Fios Local plan, which has “only” 90 channels to my 260 and is only listed under the Compare Plans link, not among the available plans on my account page?
I have no idea where that $50 discount comes from or how much these services cost before discounts. But it seems fairly obvious that saying “You’re getting $50 off via a promotional discount” after I’m past the promotional discount phase of the bundle is just an arbitrary way of keeping me from changing my service or getting a better price. It locks me into exactly what I have now unless I agree to a severe service downgrade, at which point I’ll save maybe $10.
Tell me, can you find on Verizon’s site any indication that the “actual” price of a 400/400 Fios line is $120 per month?
These aren’t just hard sells. These are fundamentally anti-consumer anchors tied to any bundle. You want a single service after getting a bundle? Too bad! You’ll be spending more, because there’s so much amorphous wiggle room in that “great deal” you got that Verizon can keep stringing you along with whatever price you’re paying and still find a way to say you’ll be paying more if you want to lose the set-top box.
There is no direct way to make an informed, long-term decision about service. The promise of “discounts” isn’t simply a lower amount you’re paying now and a higher amount you’re paying a year or two down the line. It’s an unclear modifier permanently affixed to your account, preventing you from knowing the actual price of any single service.
Because at the end of the day, no matter what discounts you’re getting, they’re still charging you $12 a month for that box you never use, and it arms them with countless excuses to make your bill even higher if you try to get rid of it.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com on November 14, 2019.
