You know that $2 “convenience” fee Verizon Wireless planned to start charging starting January 15, 2012? That fee that literally charged you $2 for paying your bill? Yeah, well, after 24-hours of public outcry – and a passive-aggressive threat by the Federal Communications Commission – Verizon has decided to eliminate the fee “at this time”:

“At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless.

According to Verizon the fee was dropped “in response to customer feedback about the plan” (aka angry mobs). However, Verizon still insists they had your best interest at heart, claiming the fee “was designed to improve the efficiency of those [bill paying] transactions” (aka having customers pay the costs of processing bill payments) and still wants everyone to “to take advantage of the numerous simple and convenient payment methods it [Verizon] provides” (aka Verizon wants you to help them save money because, you know, making $3.26 billion [profit] in three months [Q1 fiscal 2011] isn’t enough).

After an epic year of rolling out a blazing fast LTE network, it seems Verizon Wireless is having a crappy end to ’11 with numerous nationwide network outages, delayed releases to highly anticipated handsets, and now this. Anyone want cake?

Feel free to discuss in the comments below.

[via CNET, Verizon Wireless| Thanks Dan | Image credit: Tony the Misfit]