Yeah that's a good point. What I meant was "without any charge to Verizon"
Absolutely, and you made the point well. I think when companies start butting heads like this, some people don't recognize that it's not just some corporate bank account, but the results of the dollars they've already given for the services they've signed up for. I think that disconnect is responsible for a lot of the lack of outrage around this.
They're not necessarily doing this "for free", but as a part of the service their customers have already bought and paid for. It's not doing anything extra, it's normal operations, it's keeping the promise the business made to the customer, which is the opposite of what Verizon is doing in this case.