I am so happy to finally find a site to share my nightmare of over nine months with Verizon and hope my experience can help someone else—or even better yet, initiate a class action suit against the company to reimburse users for the abuse we have experienced from this company.
We had a cell plan with Verizon for a couple of years with no problems. When the contract expired we were put on a month to month basis.
Before I go into details, I want to share a phone number with you: 866-886-9078 X2414. Ask for David, tell him Yvonne gave you his number. He is really nice, wants to solve the problem (any problem with Verizon) and makes every attempt to. Bottom line for me was he couldn't do it personally, but was the only Verizon employee that made a sincere attempt.
Now our problem:
In April we changed our plan at a Radio Shack. My husband asked for a contract. He was told none was necessary and we would just continue with the new features on a month to month basis.
Within the month we received "thank you" letters for our new contract that was to expire in 2 years, with a $175. Per phone cancellation fee if we stopped the contract before 2 years.
I called Verizon and was assured we would be put back on the first plan. Here is what Verizon customers NEED to know. I was told Radio Shack employees are not trained by Verizon, and therefore are not monitored by Verizon for their errors. If you want to be sure to get a Verizon trained employee, you must locate a VERIZON COMPANY store. The kiosks in malls and even stores in strip malls are not company stores, and may have completely different plans/phones etc than a company store. They are a sub-contractor to Verizon only. During my conversations with Radio Shack trying to resolve this, I was even told something as ridiculous as I was under a "verbal" contract for this plan even though we had not signed anything.
As with most Verizon customers, we were being billed for services we were not using. We even had blatant double charges for services we had used. During the 9 months of cell-hell, I spoke to over 50 Verizon representatives and continually listened to the recording while on hold telling me that Verizon's policy was that customers problems became Verizons on the first call and was their "worry free quarantee" to take care of it on this first call!
We were put on several plans that we had not contracted for or even requested and of course billed incorrectly. We were promised "customer satisfaction" credits. It took 3 to 4 months for these credits to appear.
We finally went into a Verizon company store and signed a contract. I repeatedly called to ask why our bills did not reflect this contracted plan. I was finally told in Dec. (the contract was signed in May) that this plan NEVER existed&the person that helped us made an error by selling it to us. I had the signed contract along with the dated flyer detailing the plan.
We had our service "suspended" 2 or 3 times during the turmoil. They wanted me to pre-pay, with their assurance the credits for customer satisfaction, double charges, etc. Would appear on future billing statements. When I did get a supervisor to acknowledge billing errors on their part, they would re-instate our service only to add a re-connect fee of $15. For each of our phones. Which put me in yet another dispute with them. During all this time, the amounts we were billed were becoming more and more difficult to identify and untangle.
We eventually were accidentally connected to a representative in Hawaii. (I guess it had something to do with the late hour and Rancho Cordova forwarded the call to them since there is a 3 hour time difference) When I explained our situation to her, she reviewed our bill, understood exactly what I was telling her and made all the corrections in less than an hour! She did not try to hide the fact our contract was erroneous.
David shared the following with me, which i would like to pass on:
1-Verizon has bought up several smaller cell companies. The employees from these small companies have not all been re-trained to follow Verizon's policies, thus there will be descrepancies when speaking to various representatives. The training will probably not be completed for a couple more years.
2-If you write to a Verizon employee, it will not be forwarded from the mail room to them unless a LAST name is on the correspondence. (Ever try to get a last name?) Good Luck. I don't even know Davids!
It took my contacting 5 better business bureaus, local media, the California Public Utilities Commission and eventually the company CEO's
Verizon Communication
1095 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Ivan Seidenberg
Charles R. Lee
I wrote to the CEOs DAILY until one of their representatives finally called me, but ironically, I was calling DAILY also and got a hold of the representative in Hawaii the day before the CEO's rep called!
I had talked to an attorney about initiating a class action suit.
He said Verizon is one of the biggest complaint he received, but he hasn't gotten enough with the same common problems to start one yet. Also, please look in your CUSTOMER INFORMATION OVERVIEW it states to file it in a safe place.inside it states if you activate your service, you agree NOT to participate in any class action suits. The attorney I spoke to said this has been challenged and is not a legally binding statement.
If I can help anyone experiencing Verizon problems, please rebute and I will answer.
I have literally been physically sick (not to mention emotionally and mentally) and have spent up to 60 hours a week working on this during the past year&It would make it a little more worth it if I knew it helped some one else!
Yvonne
Prunedale, California
U.S.A.
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