Verizon!!

The BBQ Pit
1

So, Verizon calls me the other day. I happen to be home early form work because of a headache, but nevertheless I answer the phone, and begin to hear about their new program, Verizon Freedom.

Basically, unlimited local, regional toll, and long distance calling, and three value-added services. They said they thought I might be interested since I’m paying almost $50 already each month, and that was the price of the service.

I was intrigued, and bored, so I let them give me the spiel, and asked all the clarifying questions. Even rechecked the price. "So, " I said, “On my bill, I’ll see this $49.99 charge, and then there will be the taxes and such, and that’s it.” “Yup,” replied the Verizon Devil-Minion.

Sounded good. It’d increase my bill slightly, but unlimited long distance? Slick. So I let them sign me up. And they proceeded to record me twice verifying that I had, indeed, decided to opt into their plan, once with an independent verification company. I was impressed.

I was told the charges would appear on the next bill - prorated for the last half of this month, and since Verizon bills a month in advance, the charge for the next month. I was also told - and this is important - I’d be keeping the same value-added services. Call Waiting, Caller ID, and *69.

*69. Heheh.

So I get a call today - coincidentally, also off from work early because of extra time worked on Friday. An automated chipper voitells me about the new services that have been enabled on my line - “including voicemail!” piped the electronic harlot.

Uh oh. Any deviation from expectation is looked upon negatively in my world, and doubly so from Verizon. This bore investigation. Fishing out my latest bill, I dialed up their customer disservice line.

Yes, I am so witty, thank you, as to refer to it as customer disservice.

It’s entirely automated. It has me speak replies. I navigate this electronic maze of canned responses, trying to find, for a good fifteen minutes, some sign of life. Finally, since none of the options sound just right, I pick ‘remove a service from you number’. Ah! They send me to a live person. I explain the situation. She tells me Verizon Freedom is ‘all-inclusive’ so I get voicemail too.

Now, perhaps a less paranoid person would be satisfied at this juncture. No sir, not I. I ask “And could you verify the price on that for me?”

“59.95.”

“That not what I was told. I want to switch back to my previous arrangement, and I will not be charged for this service.”

There was some back and forth as she asked what I was told, expressed disbelief, handed me off to another operator to complete the transaction, etc.

The other operator provided a slim, slim explanation : “Ah, they must’ve missed that you were in West Virginia. It costs more in West Virginia.”

Well, gee. That’s a mistake anyone could make, I guess… Oh, wait. WV has exactly one Area Code. For the entire state. It belongs solely to us. If you have a program that costs more in some states it’s pretty easy to verify that you’re talking to someone in West Virginia, and I don’t mean by asking if they’re wearing shoes or not.

The kicker? I bet when my bill comes I still get charged for it. Or they somehow mistakenly disconnect my Caller Id or something.

2

You mean if I lived 5 minutes away in southern Ohio I’d be paying 10 bucks less for the Freedom Plan?!?!?!?!?!

:mad:

3

Well, of course it costs more in WV. The phone lines go up and down all those hills, so the calls have to travel much further than in flatter states.

4

Same thing happened to me with Sprint. When I moved down here for school, I looked into cell phone plans, debating whether I should keep my old number (724 area code) or else migrate down here. Well, for 7-9 PM unlimited, the cost for Washington, PA was $5 and in Morgantown it was $10! Along with the “move your number over” bonus, I ended up keeping my old number (so, yes, I have a 724 area code in West Virginia, and no landline, so that’s the number I put down everywhere!)

5

Cingular isn’t any better, a bunch of lying bastards to.

6

We’ve always had good service with Cingular.

Verizon Wireless, however, fucked us over but good. On Dave’s cell service, they started charging roaming charges one day, just out of the blue. To the tune of $500. Against their contracted agreement.

7

The wife and I had the pleasure of calling Verizon on midnight the night our contract ran out and had a little “We’re finally done with Verizon!” party.

We somehow got switched to the ever so popular “zero minutes, zero nights and weekends, no mobile to mobile plan” one month. We called when our bill came in at 500 bucks. After hours of screaming, they admitted the mistake. The next month, same thing. Eight freaking months of them admitting the mistake after hours of screaming, and this time (This time!) we have the problem fixed and it won’t happen next month. And, like an idiot, I was all optimistic every month.

GAH!

8

Ah, you too? Not only did we get charged for roaming in our non-roaming region, but we also could only rarely receive phone calls when outside the Chicago area - in areas with obvious cell towers, and where our phones indicated they had a good signal. We had to call our own number to retrieve the resulting voicemails, which were (of course) then charged as long-distance calls. Their only response when confronted about this was that “that shouldn’t have happened” and that they weren’t going to refund us, as if we had somehow fucked up their phone service.

9

I’ll join in Pitting Verizon, for a different reason. We just got DSL through them, and the first modem they sent was defective.

Can you call anyone and get information on it? It’s pretty hard. They keep recommending you back to their website. Excuse me, if the modem doesn’t work, i can’t get to your website, now can I?

Bastards.

10

Last December 13 was my Verizon Freedom day. I can not tell you how nice it is not to have their random bills sent on random dates for random amounts.
I’m now a happy Sprint customer - I get a bill that generally makes sense which is for about the same amount every month for services I know about ahead of time. Amazing.

I’m convinced Verizon sends bills out at times deliberately designed to produce misleading statements. What I found very funny is that on December 20 I got 2 pieces of mail from Verizon.

One was a bill, dated November 25 - on which they had not given me credit for payment made earlier in November. It was a ridiculously high bill, once which would have stopped my heart if I wasn’t wise to their games. I imediately called the company and found that I actually had $70 credt, and was not $350 in arrears like the statement indicated.

The other was a letter fretting about the fact I had discontinued their services and assuring me that all was forgiven and that they’d be delighted to sign me back up.

Hah!

11

Update.

Received bill in the mail today. I’d been charged for Verizon Freedom, and an extra charge for the supposedly free Voicemail service.

No credit appeared on the bill.

Called Verizon, wading through the AI designed to keep you away from the five people they have working the phones.

Explained the situation. Used the words ‘Verizon personnel lied to me twice’ and ‘false pretenses’. She adjusted my bill in the system, told me only to send in $15, the rest being comped this time, and normal billing to resume with the next bill.

She did seem annoyed when I explained to her that a Verizon employee had told me the same thing before, a couple years back, and I sent in the lessened amount I was given, only to be hit with a late fee for the rest of the amount. But she assures me that won’t happen.

For those of you burdened with Verizon : If you call their help line, and get the AI that understands button-pressing or voice commands… if it’s anything like ours, there’s a trick you can do. I got so frustrated today trying to navigate the paths that I just pressed the ‘Help’ key (*) several times in a row, with a few seconds pause between each - after 4 or 5, the AI apologized for not being able to help me, and forwarded me to an actual person.

12

Well, I was hoping to come in here and say I was glad to hear everything was resolved, Turtle-Man. It’s a pity.

Don’t forget to log every call and keep a notebook of what time/who you talked to/what they said.

13

I won’t bore the world with the details of my dealings with Verizon. In their defense, I suppose it was a pretty difficult maneuver I wanted them to do – switch me and my girlfriend to a shared Verizon plan, with both of us keeping our current numbers, and with me coming from AT&T and her coming from Sprint.

But the seemingly arbitrary bills!! Up one month, down the next! WTF, I say. And it’s not any sort of usage cost, like roaming or extra minutes. It’s just that one month they decide our services cost $29.99, the next month we’re charged $19.99, then 4400 kroner, then six goats…

14

Shit, if that was the case, Qwest would be paying me each month to use the phone. :smiley:

FiveYear, I know exactly what you mean with the random bills, dates and charges. For about 2 years we had to call them every fucking month to get it adjusted. Never again until they come up with one set price, in writing, plus taxes. Regardless of what “services” they “offer” us that we never find out about until the next bill. Requiring a second call for the month. Assholes.

15

My fiancée and I had AT&T Wireless, now owned by Cingular. A few months ago we moved back into my hometown. My cell phone always worked fine here and worked fine where I was and worked fine on the drive to and from. I hit patches of “roaming” here and there, but if I needed to make a call or someone needed to call me my phone always worked. OK.

In January I decided to switch my plan to local numbers so my mom would stop complaining about having to call me long distance. We went into the local cell phone store (a vendor for AT&T) to do so…and came out 3 hours later. Fun fun! While at the store I was told I could get two new phones with the new contract I would have to get to get the new phone numbers. I can’t figure out why I needed a new contract, but there it is. I said sure, I wouldn’t mind new phones. Except–OOps!–there are no phones that will work with the new system because of the changeover. We can’t get on the Cingular network and will have to stay on AT&T. Ok, I say, that’s fine. So we just decide to use our old phones. We go home with our new plan only to find out she had given us the wrong phone number for my fiancée’s phone. (We also asked for a new battery and she said her manager would call us when they got it in…never to be heard from again.)

OK! SO! After a few weeks I get a bill. Except it’s not a bill, it’s one of those “Thanks for using our EFT program! This will be drafted from your credit card!” things. I had specifically asked that they discontinue our EFT since we had moved and had switched banks. I call AT&T to find out what happened. They say “Yeah, it takes a month to inactivate the EFT. You should have been told.” I say I wasn’t told any such thing. They say, “Tough titties, that’s how it works.” When I ask if there will be any consequences to my EFT snafu (since they won’t be getting any money from my closed account) they say, “We’ll put a note on your account explaining what happened” “So I won’t get punished” “We’ll put a note” “Can I have that in writing?” “We don’t write letters” “Will you cover whatever fees my bank may charge me for this draw on a closed account?” “No”

A few weeks later I get the “Hey, you didn’t pay your bill, you deadbeat!” note. I am pissed, but I pay it.

Then I start to notice that this whole time (since I changed my number) my phone is doing strange things. It won’t receive calls when I know people are calling me, I just get the voicemail later. I can’t place calls in some places. Generally, anywhere that’s not on an AT&T tower won’t work. Even places where it worked just fine before. So I call AT&T. And spend 3 hours on the phone. They tell me all sorts of crappy things, blame it on my, blame it on my phone, transfer me to god knows where and not explain my problem so I have to tell it all over again…etc. Turns out I need to buy a new phone. At full price. That I could have gotten for free when I switched the number, but didn’t because none were in stock that would work. Grrr. I ask to speak with a manager, I get told it will take a really long time on hold, so I speak with yet another CSR who tells me maybe she can get some local store to mail me a sim card which MAY fix the problem but probably not. That was a week ago and I have seen neither hide nor hair of the card and have not received a follow up call.

OK. So yesterday I switched to US Cellular. Hallelujah! We get a sweet little camera phone for each of us, jillions of minutes, a really nice sales person who --gasp-- answers our questions and asks us if it’s ok before answering her phone. Joy! We spend a few hours getting to know the phones, then I call AT&T back.

I explain that they broke the contract by not providing service. I explain that the whole point of the cancellation fee is to recoup any losses on the phones we get for free (which we didn’t get because there weren’t any) we shouldn’t owe any early cancellation fee. They explain back, yes, yes you do. In fact, since we have two lines, we owe them two fees–$350!!! I ask to speak with a manager. They tell me it will be a while since he is “helping” another customer. Can he call me back later? Why sure, I say. Of course, he never called.

So today I am filled with JOY! because I have a sweet new phone and (hopefully) a good company to deal with. I am also filled with DREAD! because I don’t want to spend $350 to get away from this other company. My uncle (who is a lawyer) says the only legal way out is to take them to small claims court, which I am not gonna do, but that it can’t hurt to threaten them a little. So, I’ll be calling back tonight. Good thing I like yelling at people. :mad: mad face.

16

Sprint PCS decided I wanted to be put on this same plan after I added a second line to my account last month.

I tried to make a call one day, only to receive the always-pleasant message that my service had been disconnected for an overdue balance in the amount of $275. This was two weeks to the day after I’d payed the bill in full online. $275 in two weeks, hmm? Time to call Customer Service. Oh, wait: I can’t, because I don’t have a landline and the only options available from a disconnected PCS phone are “Make credit card payment” or “Make payment by check”. So, I drive out to the Sprint store to see what they can tell me. Answer: nothing. They look up my account, tell me it’s disconnected (why thank you for that!), and that I owe $275. I ask for a summary of the charges, to which the salesperson replies that he doesn’t have that information, because “the bill hasn’t posted yet”. My question of why my service was suspended for nonpayment of an unposted bill is handily dodged, so I instead ask when exactly the bill would be posted. He replies that I should check online in 2-3 days, which I do. Unfortunately, the PCS website, while very useful for giving you a balance and providing payment options, is not so good at describing the individual charges that comprise said balance. And by “not so good”, I mean that it doesn’t. At all. The information is simply not there.

So, back to the Sprint store. After another round of the same fun and exciting (in the tooth-pulling sense) Q&A, I am once again informed that the bill has not yet posted (this, despite the fact that it is four days since I was quoted the “2-3 days” figure). I protest, at which point the salesman walks onto the sales floor, picks up one of the sample handsets, and dials the number for PCS customer service, telling me that they’ll have more information than he. A representative comes to the line (side note: I really wish I’d payed attention to the number the sales guy dialed that instantly connected to a CSR), and, after going through the same process yet a third time (only with more personal-info-providing goodness thanks to the CS line’s security procedures), I am given the exceedingly helpful information that – get this – they can’t tell me anything, because the bill has not yet posted. Well hey, why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place? So, after obtaining multiple assurances that I can dispute any and all incorrect charges even after I’ve already paid for them, I make a $150 payment to restore service.

About a week later, I receive the paper bill in the mail. Looking over it, I discover that, yep, I’m being charged $0.40/minute for every single call I’ve made in the past three weeks. Armed with this information, I call Customer Service again (this time from my own phone, thank Og for small favors). I explain to the CSR exactly what the problem is, and she tells me to hold on a moment, during which time she…

– wait for it –

…actually fixes the problem. It’s an amazing thing. She removes the usage charges from the account and applies my previous payment to the current real balance, resulting in my having an $88 credit balance going into this month. Whew.

So, on the whole, it looks like Sprint’s customer service works exactly as well as their fucked-up system allows it to function. Still, you’ve got to wonder about a company that, as a matter of official policy, suspends its customers’ service for nonpayment a week and a half prior to the posting of the bill that is supposedly unpaid, while simultaneously refusing to arm its CSRs with the relevant account information to explain said suspension. Way to model your business, Sprint. Be glad you’ve got genuinely helpful people handling the real work, because otherwise nobody would bother to stay with you after even one “honest mistake”.