Complaint Review: Verizon Southwest

My nightmare began during a divorce - and tried switching over FIOS TV and FIOS Internet to a Verizon land line phone number. The service address did not change.

For about 3 months after the divorce, I thought everything was fine- until my Internet was turned off. Since all my Verizon services were auto-billed to my credit card, te payments were current but not according to Verizon. Somewhere deep in the bowels of their billing system the Internet account was (is) still tied to an old phone number.

After a week long outtage in which they could not force the billing system to realize my account was indeed current, they punted and issued a manual request to turn my internet back on.

Again I thought things were resolved until I changed service providers for my phone. I later learned from a cocky service representative that despite the fact AT&T notified Verizon to relinquish my phone number, I "should have" known to phone Verizon and discuss with them how to uncouple my FIOS TV and Internet accounts from this number.

Instead, Verizon decided to split the accounts each with different account numbers. Neither of which I could access via their 'award winning customer self-service' website because the site claims my account numbers were invalid. This despite the fact that I continue to this day to receive hard copy bills with said numbers printed on them.

Fed up this past April, I canceled all of my Verizon FIOS services. The following day, April 25,2008, I returned their equipment to a Verizon store and received a receipt.

Since that date I have continued to receive bills for FIOS TV and Internet services. Each month I have phoned Verizon and discussed the matter that in fact they were no longer my provider. Each time the customer service representative would find an error in the system and "correct" matters. Still bills continued to arrive.

On July 2nd, I again phoned Verizon and again the service representative confirmed that I had in fact cancelled my service on April 24. Again a "corection" was made and I was told my final bill was $72.29 - which I promptly paid.

A few weeks later I received a bill for the $72.29 and noticed it encompassed dates AFTER I canceled my service. So in fact they now owed me money. To make matters worse, starting in June I began to received pre-recorded phone calls telling me I had not returned my equipment.

Again I had to call yet another number, stay on hold and in this instance stay on hold only to eventually be told no one was available - to leave a message (which didn't do any good because the calls continued).

Eventually I was able to catch one of the calls and be connected to a live representative. This was on July 10th. After nearly an hour on the phone with this representative he confirmed there was yet another glitch and yes I had returned all the equipment and he just had to delete one record that was causing this to appear as if I still had some of their equipment.

This past weekend I received yet another bill dated 7/13- thanking me for my 7/2 payment but claiming I still owed them $96.77 and informing me my account had been referred to an 'outside collection agency'. The bill also claims I have either not returned or returned damaged set-top boxes.

It has been over THREE MONTHS since I used any of Verizon's services. I have spent countless hours emailing, phoning, hanging on hold, being transferred from one department to another, being told one department can't address another department's issue, and being assured the glitches have been corrected.

I have proof from Verizon I returned the equipment - their idiotic systems just aren't connected to know it. At this juncture they owe me money for over billing me for my last month of service.

How they can illegally send my account to an 'outside collection agency' when they can't provide any proof of how they've derived the $96.77 baffles me. Why any person should have to spend MONTHS helping them unravel their byzantine manner of doing business only to be harassed by random number generator bills is absolutely pathetic.

Dana
Highland Village, Texas
U.S.A.

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