Verizon Over Charging for EA Apps

[pc747]

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Many verizon users have come to expect preloaded apps on our phone and the thought was that maybe it was so that it help with the cost of the device. Well I have been made aware by a few people that verizon charges us more for ea games then any other carrier. We are being charged 7.99 for tetris while people of other carriers are paying 2.99. When I called up verizon I was not happy with the answer I got. The good thing is that its only ea games that is affected and not any other apps on the market. But If I am stuck with preloaded apps like NFS (ea game) and other apps that I can not remove with out rooting then I should not also have to pay twice as more for an ea app as people on other carriers.

Screen shots will be posted in thread.

 

[pc747]

Screen shots:
Thanks to Scorpdx @ andriodforums and others for submitting:

Bejeweled 2 for other carriers:

Tetris on other carriers:

 

[dfuser312553]

Seriously??? Thanks pc!

 

[Beardface]

So, I have to ask... what was the reasoning Verizon gave you?

 

[hookbill]

Now you look here young man. Who do you think you're fooling with. You will pay exactly what Verizon tells you and you'll stop your complaining now!:r_c:

Well, that's a heads up not to buy anything EA from Verizon. Interesting stuff pc747.

 

[pc747]

I asked a csr and she said she would do some research.

She called back and said "We are charging you extra to ensure our games are safe".

I thanked her for taking the time to get that info and politely told her to have a nice day. I know that was the answer they gave her and was not going to be rude to a person passing alone the info. But it is clear that verizon must have a deal with ea and we are paying for it.
The bejeweled screen shot was from sprint and the tetris was from t-mobile so its not like maybe its just one carrier offering it cheaper.

 

[dfuser312553]

Now you look here young man. Who do you think you're fooling with. You will pay exactly what Verizon tells you and you'll stop your complaining now!..

Lawlz
Yet another thing to make sure I hashtag Verizon on twitter.

 

[Bob Dammit]

What happens if we buy apps from the market website and have them pushed to out phones? Do we pay the price listed on the website, or do we get the exclusive Verizon price plan? Who gets the extra money, Verizon or EA?

 

[kodiak799]

Well, they are still getting paid to put pre-loaded apps on there. The whole Vcast or whatever mechanism is mostly designed to take advantage of foolish/lazy people.

The simple fact of the matter is all the whining in the world isn't going to make a difference until people start voting with their wallets. Even if this stuff truly irritated me it's not practical for me to consider switching carriers. VZW's turn last year was like 1-2%, which is incredibly low (think AT&T was @ 7% and Sprint 15%+) - they look at that and laugh at our idle threats.

 

[pc747]

I tried that it will not allow you to. It grays out all verizon phone so basically you have to pay the verizon price. Some one told me a work around but i want to look into it and make sure its legal and it will not submit users to potential malware.

 

[Martin030908]

VZW rakes us for everything else why not games?

 

[Jaxidian]

Man, I wish Tmo, Sprint, or AT&T had decent networks!

 

[Beardface]

You know... I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit brought against Verizon at this point (and against Motorola, but I'll get into that in a second). This is extremely deceptive, and it should be explained to their customers that they are doing this. We are not getting the services for the understood costs when we signed up with Verizon. When we did, we expected that we were getting the Android operating system, with the same prices within the market thats being charged elsewhere. That is not the case. We are actually paying 3 times the price for certain apps as opposed to other carriers. That should be explained, and made public. Who knows how many other price gouging techniques they are implementing. And all of this while eliminating unlimited plans in an effort to extort more money out of their customers? Unreal.

And as far as Moto (and possibly HTC) and Verizon together, I'm surprised someone hasn't sued them over un-deletable bloatware. I can understand Moto wanting to lock down their device, and I can understand Verizon wanting the same, but to load up applications and make them literally impossible to delete? Its not like these are crucial to the operation of the system, all they do is take up space and CPU, and bog down the phone. Its ridiculous. You purchased the device, you own the rights to it, you should be able to control what applications are being used. With practices like this, Verizon and Moto could have an app loaded with a behind the scenes program that logs all passwords, addresses, bank account information, social security numbers, etc, to all be used maliciously against you by the companies and there would not be a single thing you could do about it. Yeah, thats worst case, but you see where I am going with this. I am very surprised nobody is taking them to court, it would be an easy win.

 

[jkhonea]

God, Verizon is definitely getting more brazen in their charging. They know they have people by virtue of the network coverage and now they're going to just start abusing us with it. Unbelievable.

 

[pc747]

Market Enabler (on the android market) allows you to spoof the market to make it think you are another carrier but it requires root access. Found info on androidforums.