Verizon’s Quick U-Turn a Sign of Anti-Corporate Energy

I love how rapidly Verizon caved on their plan to charge subscribers a $2 fee for processing certain kinds of monthly payments. As reported in the New York Times, reactions from customers, communications industry watchdogs, and FCC officials ranged from outrage to threats of investigations. The recent campaign that made Bank of America drop its proposed $5 debit card fee took a few weeks to reach its goals, while this explosion of anger at Verizon was over in a scant 24 hours. I’m a Verizon customer and planned to contact them with my own outrage, but I didn’t have time! This says something about the anti-corporate mood prevalent in the U.S. right now, thanks at least in part to the #OWS movement. Only at their peril do companies blithely try putting anti-consumerist policies into place. GoDaddy’s loss of subscribers over their support for SOPA, which I posted about last night, is another example of the same impulse in the consumer zeitgeist.