Lazy Man and Money

Verizon is Evil (and some personal finance links)

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I think my new favorite past times is calling a company evil. Witness my MonaVie and Ijango posts of the past. I like to think I’m relatively justified when I call out a company for being evil. The evil company of the week is… Verizon.

Why are they evil? A company called 4Info allows people to create text message alerts. If you want to know when Brett Favre throws a touchdown, you can go to the website and set that up. It’s quite a handy service. Like any intelligent company, they look to make a profit. The text message alerts are free (as long as your cell phone provider doesn’t charge), but they come with a small advertisement… usually 20 characters or so. That advertising supports the company. This weekend Verizon decided that they would stop their customers from being able to access this service.

I don’t know why Verizon decided to prevent the service. Perhaps they are jealous that 4Info is making a business using Verizon’s service. That sounds pretty weird considering how popular cell phone app stores are nowadays. App stores made the iPhone what it is and bring a lot of customers to AT&T. It’s puzzling to me that Verizon would do this at the risk of losing customers. Furthermore, they may find themselves open for a lawsuit unless they let everyone out of their contracts. If I were a Verizon customer in a contract and I was looking to get out, this would be a fantastic opportunity. After all, Verizon effective took away a service from their customers.

My friend Kosmo wrote more about Verizon trying to kill 4info. It’s a good article, I highly suggest you read it.

And onto the links:

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