Verizon Looks After Wireless Customer Concerns
A tip of the blog hat to Dory Devlin at Yahoo! Tech for her
recent post on Verizon allowing customers to change the makeup of their service plan without triggering a renewal.
As Dory points out, the wireless giant realized that when a service becomes a commodity, good customer service processes can be a
differentiator. Next to roaming charges that unexpectedly hit customer invoices, the biggest wireless complaint Consumer Help Web receives is a service plan change creating a contract extension.
Good catch on Yahoo!'s part and brilliant move from Verizon. Seeing companies profit when doing right by the customer is awesome!
Labels: Devlin, Verizon, Yahoo
Yahoo Closing Bill Paying Service
Yahoo, beginning to apparently make moves without former head Terry
Semel, is dumping its bill paying service in September.
The service, Yahoo Bill Pay, was 8 years old -- making it one of the site's and the
Internet's oldest services. The currently reported date the service will close is September 14, 2007.
The closure appears to be the first house cleaning done by founder Jerry Yang and top lieutenant Susan Decker. At the time of its introduction, consumers could choose from standalone bill-paying services that charged a monthly fee or hope their financial institution offered the service. That
buildout did not occur for years, however, and even when it did, one of the proprietary services was often the private-labeled
backend.
What does this mean for consumers? Consumer Help Web President Joan
Bounacos says most financial institutions now offer the service for free. "If you can't find the service at your own bank or credit union, companies like Quicken-maker Intuit, are happy to sell your their service. But consumers should shop hard because online banking, including bill payment is quickly becoming a staple throughout the nation. It not only benefits the consumer by centralizing their data, but helps businesses improve their cash flow, which hopefully results in lowered or stable prices,"
Bounacos said.
Labels: BillPay, online banking, Yahoo
