Good Guy Verizon won’t charge Sandy victims for voice and text overages

Hurricane Sandy was tough for just about everyone on the East Coast, but Verizon is easing the burden a tiny bit.

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The company says that it will waive voice and texting charges for its New York and New Jersey customers until November 16th.

But that doesn’t mean your Verizon service is on the house.

Instead, the deal applies only to so-called “usage charges”, which is Verizon’s way of saying “overages.” That means that you still have to pay your “monthly access charges”, i.e, your bill.

The other limitation shouldn’t surprise you: While the deal applies to voice and text, the same doesn’t go for data access. This is a significant omission because, for many of those affected by Sandy, the Internet was the primary way for them to get information about what was going on in the outside world.

Verizon spokesperson Andrea Kimmet told me that the company didn’t extend its program to data because it found that, for customers, voice and data were used far more often during disasters. That said, Verizon isn’t against the idea of waiving data-related overages in certain situations.

“We will handle data-related concerns on a case-by-case basis,” the spokesperson said.

Photo: Flickr/Shane_curcure