We had four lines of mobile phone service (a family plan) with T-Mobile with NO problems for 10 years. Suddenly, loss of reception began to occur, and after almost a year of poor reception with no improvement, we decided to try Verizon's '30-day Test Drive' during which, they advertise, if you don't like their service, you can 'switch BACK to your old service provider and owe nothing.'
Don't believe this lie!
We had nothing but trouble with Verizon during the trial period, to such extent that we elected to port-back to our previous carrier well within the 30-day period, and called T-Mobile to request this. Unfortunately, the service tech. Who took the request was new and/or improperly trained, and placed all FOUR of our phone lines on ONE request, which apparently is not the speediest way to transfer service. As a result, it took 5 days (a few hours more) to actually complete the transfer, at which point we were just a couple of HOURS past the 30th day of the 'trial' period. At that point, Verizon refused to accept return of any of the equipment, even though we had been IN the Verizon store the previous evening requesting return. We were told they would not accept the return because the phone numbers had not physically ported over yet, despite the fact that we had requested it days earlier.
In addition, Verizon now said we owed $175 per line in early termination fees, that of course they would *graciously waive* if we signed a NEW 2-year contract! We were forced to accept this extortion because we now could not afford to eat the cost of four lines of equipment plus early termination fees, but continued to have nothing but horrible experiences with Verizon's service. Each month when we had to call them to resolve issues with our account, we again delineated the entire ordeal and questioned the legality of the entire situation. We FINALLY reached a CSR who agreed, and both he and his supervisor confirmed that if T-Mobile called Verizon and verified the date & time of our port request, we would be released from the admittedly invalid contract and allowed to return to T-Mobile.
However, each time T-Mobile contacted Verizon on our behalf, they reached a CSR who refused to honor Verizon's promise. Even with names and operator numbers of the Verizon employees who had made the promise to us, T-Mobile tried repeatedly to enlist the cooperation of Verizon in verification of our port request, and each time was refused by Verizon, who of course wanted to keep our contract payments coming!
We finally realized that as long as we kept paying the bill, Verizon was going to continue to sit back and laugh at how they had managed to extort a 2-year contract from customers who requested to port-back to their previous company during a 30-day trial. What a great marketing scam! When we realized this, we quit paying Verizon and enlisted the assistance of T-Mobile in verifying our statements as we filed complaints with our state Attorney General's office, and the FCC. During this process, we learned an important fact: Verizon had CONFIRMED our port request within FOUR SECONDS of when we made the actual request, a full FOUR or FIVE DAYS prior to the expiration of the 30-day trial! This PROVES the demand for early termination fees 'or sign a new 2-year contract' was truly extortion, and highly illegal, as the receipt of a port request from a customer is considered in the industry to be a request for discontinuation of service from the current provider, which in this case was Verizon!
Despite all of this, Verizon's SPIN control expert, Ms. Lucy Arzola, sent a letter full of outright LIES to both the Attorney General's office and the FCC, and rather than investigate the veracity of her claims, the FCC closed its case based solely on her false statements. We are currently investigating the possibility of a class action, on behalf of ourselves and all others similarly situated, so if you have had a similar experience with a Verizon 30-day TEST DRIVE, please respond here with contact information so that our attorney may contact you and you may become a member of the class for the purpose of compensatory and special (punitive!) damages.
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