Look up "Phone Cramming", it's when you get mysterious charges on your phone bill for services you didn't order.
Verizon and their partner ILD Teleservices are notorious for it.
Sure Verizon will claim* they will remove these charges if they happen, but good luck with that.
* Their trick is to tell you to pay your phone bill in full with the phony charges and they will credit you next month, but when next month comes of course there's no credit. Being that trying to get in touch with their customer service can take a hour or more, they are hoping you just give up and pay the bill.
I am thankfully Verizon free now. I will go back to using a rotary phone before I ever use them again.
I just added a line to my Verizon wireless plan for my son last month and was very careful to be sure the phone I got for him did not require a data plan. I actually got this phone at one of the Verizon 3rd party “dealers”.
Imagine my surprise when I got my first bill a couple of weeks ago and they charged me for a data plan on that new phone. I was FURIOUS! I called their customer support and they told me that data plans were required on that phone as of November 2009 and there was nothing he could do about it. He suggested I go back to the 3rd party dealer and see if they could give me a different phone!!!! I WAS PISSED! This phone was a birthday gift for my son and he absolutely loves the phone. After I gave this customer service guy the “what for” and had to listen to his weak excuse that they require it because too many people get burned by data usage on their new phones, I marched down to the local 3rd party Verizon dealer. The guy I bought the phone from actually remembered me and remembered the “no data plan” requirement I requested. He was PISSED at Verizon at that point. Long story short, he told me the Verizon CS Rep lied to me about the Nov. 2009 date and showed me the Verizon memo that said the phone required a data plan if purchased after January 18th, 2010!!! He got his Verizon Rep involved and I will be credited the billed data plan and the data plan will be removed from this phone. That’s why I go through this 3rd party dealer, they have great Customer Service whereas the Verizon guy lied through his teeth to me.