sickened by hurricane sandy billing

sickened

I sustained subtantial damage to my home and lost ALL of my personal property in hurricane sandy. I requetsed verizon to turn off my service in early Nov 2012. They advised that how they handle these situations is to put you on a "Vacation Hold" until you were ready for service again.

As of the writing of this, 708 days after Sandy, I AM STILL NOT HOME. I received a text message from Verizon in March 2014 that I was behind in my payments, and that I owed $700+. My mail during this time was forwarded however I was definitely not receiving all of it. Also I have been moving place to place during this time.

I contacted Verizon immediately and spoke to a rep, Bryan. He explained that the service came off "vacation" after 9 months automatically. He further stated that I would have been advised of this policy a the time of suspension. I explained to him that my brain was not functioning to its full capacity at the time, as I had just been through the loss of everything. He stated he understood and then put me in for a credit and put the service back on "vacation".

To shorten this story and give just the issues, I have been through several reps, and now owe $832.00. I was refused any credit on the services and I appealed the decision. I was told by Christina, that she was the final decision and that verizon had found the services issued to be legitimate. This is after I offered to meet a rep at my home to show them that I still had NO WALLS, NO ELECTRICTY, AND NO PHONE OR CABLE LINES attached to my house. How can I use a service that is not connected and I have no electricity?? My electricity was just re-connected in June 2014, and I have the billing to show that. Furthermore, the policy of just automatically coming off "vacation" is horrible. After 9 months, when I hadn't contacted them to re-connect, did they think I was just sitting home, without tv or phone, waiting for the 9 months to be up? That they were doing me a favor with the automatic reconnect? The whole thing is just disgusting.

When I told Christine that I would have to re-think using them in the future when I'm back in my home, and possibly end my relationship with them at my business and through my wireless (which I have been a customer for YEARS) she stated "well, thats certainly your prerogative".

I really wanted to send a complaint email, but funny....they dont have that as a choice under the "contact us" tabs.

Now off to the Asbury Park Press and the local news stations for additional assistance. Oh, and Christine, my wireless contract is up today...heading to AT&T....

[Deleted User]

Hi sickened,

Your issue has been escalated to a Verizon agent. Before the agent can begin assisting you, they will need to collect further information from you. Please go to your profile page for the forum and look at the top of the middle column where you will find an area titled "My Support Cases". You can reach your profile page by clicking on your name beside your post, or at the top left of this page underneath the title of the board.

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