Verizon Wireless joins T-Mobile (and maybe others) in waiving activation fees for new subscribers from now until the end of 2008. The fee is generally $35 and thought it’s hard to imagine that it costs Verizon anything to activate your phone, they’ve had a good time sticking it to their subscribers with all manners of nickel and diming. Hopefully this is the start of a new cell phone era where the invoicing will more closely represent the actual advertised plan price – but I doubt it. Not too surprisingly it looks as if a lot of the Verizon phones sold by Amazon went up by…(anyone want to guess)….roughly $35.. PS – Looks like Amazon went through and re-priced many of their phones. If you’re in the market for a cell phone I’d keep an eye on the Amazon store and not purchase quite yet. Many of these phones will got to free or negative (after rebate) pretty quickly.

Verizon