Who out there uses Verizon? Not necessarily as their cell phone provider but maybe for TV and Internet. When we had our apartment in Arlington, VA, I arranged for Verizon to hook up our TV and Internet. I did not take any specials because I was not sure about how long we would live there. Fast forward one year. I called Verizon to let them know I would be discontinuing service. They offered to transfer our service and I let them know that we would be living in an RV full time so we would not need it. Verizon mailed pre paid boxes for the equipment. I mailed the equipment on 5 December. I got an email from them acknowledging that they had received the equipment. I got a notice in early January letting me know how much my Verizon bill was. I called them and reminded them that I had arranged to stop service and that I had mailed my equipment. I was told that calling and mailing in equipment was not enough. They said that I should have called again and told them that I was discontinuing service. Anyway, I continued to talk to the rep and he verbally confirmed my service disconnect and gave me a disconnect confirmation number. Well, I got another bill in February. I cannot really call them bills because I was on auto pay so they just took the money and then told me about it. I stopped auto pay and called again. It was confirmed again that I had discontinued my service with a stop billing date of 8 December. I got another number and this guy even said he would call in March to make sure everything had gone the way it was supposed to. Everything did not go as it should have and he did not call. I got another bill in March but they could not take it out of auto pay so they insisted that I pay them via check or credit card. Two days after I got this bill, I got an email from Verizon saying they had over billed me and that they were very sorry. They said they would credit my account and that I would get a refund. Nope. I got a call the other day from a 3rd party bill collector saying that I owed Verizon $114.26 and that Verizon had handed my account over to them for collection. I called Verizon again and after 1 hour and 20 minutes, I spoke with Shania from Arizona. She is the ONLY person who did what she should have done. She brought up my account, quickly recognized how hosed things were and started cleaning up the mess. I was owed refunds of $465. Before I spoke with Shania, I spoke with FOUR other reps(just in that one day) who said they could not even find my account. Shania was great but did tell me that she could not do anything about the 3rd party collection agency. She said I would have to call the Financial section and that she was billing. I called them Monday and was immediately told that my file could not be found because it had been handed over to a collection agency. I continued to insist that she look and she finally put me on hold. She came back in about three minutes and said she had my file and that she was taking me off the collection agency list. I then asked me about the refund and she said she could not handle that. Only billing could arrange for the refund. She connected me to billing and after over 30 minutes on hold, I was connected and then promptly cut off.
So....after almost six months, I think I am no longer on the collection agency list, I think Verizon acknowledges that I do not owe them money and that they owe me money. I do not have my refund and just have not had the desire to call them again. I WILL GET MY MONEY. I am so thankful that I took down all names, dates, numbers and saved all emails about this. I took pictures of all of my chat sessions with different reps. I do not want to sound like the guy on the State Farm Commercial but I WILL NEVER USE VERIZON AGAIN! I feel certain that many of those folks were trained to deny, deny, deny any wrongdoing and refunds are just not in their mode of operation. I was so frustrated and then really ticked off when I got that call from the collection agency. I will never again assume that a company will do the right thing.
Megan's computer crapped out. We did get it fixed but she had not backed up. The tech was able to get all her stuff back and I bought her another external drive for backup with Time Machine. If you are not backing up....do it NOW!
Another great day in this thing we call life.
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