I have a pay per view charge occuring on 5/17/2015 for WWE?? that I did not order. When I initiated a live chat to dispute the charge, the agent told me that the order came from my remote to my cable box and therefore, I MUST HAVE ORDERED IT. When I came home to check the serial number, it was in fact my box. That doesn't change the fact that neither I, nor my husband, and assuming neither my cats, ordered pay per view (no others in the apartment, only 1 TV and 1 cable box). To be perfectly clear, we've never ordered PPV for anything, ever.
I called an agent to go over my options and was told my account can go in review and I would get an answer within 48 hours. I will either be rejected and forced to pay, or have the charge removed. I was also given additional details - I am being charged for watching PPV from 7:30PM to about 2AM. I know the TV was off most of that time (noone was home) and that we were watching other cable TV programming during the later period of time Verizon is claiming I was watching PPV - when I asked if they could see all activity on the cable box, I was told they could not. When I asked if I could make disable PPV from my account completely so I don't get these phantom charges in the future, I was told that it was not an option. I can only add a PIN number for the remote.
Naturally, I came to the internet to see if the unfounded pay per view charging is something that has happened to anyone else and sure enough, there are lots and lots of complaints. I'm cuirous to know if Verizon is basically treating these as isolated incidents that are more easily contained by assuming the customer is lying (or that the customer made a mistake) and just refunding some of them, or if they are taking it seriously as a system flaw, that could have possibly been hacked, resulting in people being charged for services they did not request or use.
I am being led to understand that I could get charged for PPV at any time magically whether anyone in my household orders it or not, because it shows up on my account so therefore it must have happened.
What if it does happen again (since it happened once and Verizon's position is that it is all on me?) If I call Verizon to dispute this kind of claim in the future, will they think me complicit? Is the best option just to remove cable completely because this is a real possibility that I could be told I am ordering something that I am not?
