
It's a charge many iPhone lovers will surely balk at. Verizon Wireless today announced that it will add on a whopping $30 surcharge for customers who upgrade their mobile device.
Beginning April 22nd, Verizon Wireless will charge the fee for device upgrades in addition to the price they pay for the new device. A rep for the company tells Reuters that the added charge will help the carrier "provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect."
According to some of the analysts who have weighed in on the matter, Verizon's move will all but certainly not be welcomed by customers, but it may not be enough to dramatically curtail iPhone upgrades. More importantly to Verizon, however, is that the new fee could add up to an additional $1 billion for Verizon annually.
So although upgrade charges are, in fact, quite common (Sprint Nextel, for example, charges a $36 upgrade fee), they are never popular or fatal. And that's acceptable to Verizon, which seems to be less concerned with what's popular and more concerned with what's profitable as the carrier looks make a bigger bank out of the top smartphone on the market today.
Source: Reuters
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