Verzion Internet nightmare

[BeyondDisappointed]

On May 6th 2024 I walked into a store.  I am self-employed with assistants and needed another cable box.  I was initially told when I acquired my first three boxes that I could have one box per line. I have seven phone lines.  Seven boxes were not necessary, but needed one more.  I had two boxes at the very first promotion that Verizon came out with, which was $25 a month for 10 years. When I added the third box it was $35 a month for 5 years. Still both of them fantastic promotions which allowed me to be able to triple my business at a reasonable cost. 

I had fantastic unlimited data for my phones, and my internet. I had fantastic protection across the smartphones. I had visual voicemail, hotspots and a great caller ID plan. For seven phone lines, and three cable boxes, I paid $408 a month. 

The sales person and manager in the store worked with somebody in a central call center and said if I switched over to a business plan I could get the fourth internet box and have everything else, EXACTLY THE SAME, for $410 a month. 

One month later I'm received a bill for $868!

I tried going online to see what was happening only to discover that my user ID and password had been changed. I could not even access my account. 

Next I discovered that not being able to access my account, I could not pay the bill, even though I was not going to pay a bill that high. 

Every phone call to Verizon takes me 1 to 4(yes, once I spent FOUR hours on the phone) hours out of my day.  Not being able, initially, to carve enough time out of my day to make a phone call that long, suddenly I discovered my auto pay wasn't on there and my bill was past due and my service was shut off. 

Now Verizon adds a $216 reconnect fee. 

I also now discover that the business internet is NOT unlimited. I start getting notices everywhere that I'm running out of data and that when I do it's going to start costing me $10 a day. 

I stop using as many boxes as I possibly could trying to figure out which box goes where, because I can't access my account, and finally stop using every box except for one.  Somehow, miraculously, without anybody actually being connected to it, it's still runs out of data and charges me. 

After multiple phone calls I had had enough. I spent $1,205 with Verizon from May 6th through July 6th and I AM DONE!  I am self-employed, if I don't work hard, neither myself, nor my assistants eat. I don't get a paycheck like everyone sitting in your offices on the phone behind a computer screen. 

I call in livid and asked to go back to my personal plan EXACTLY AS IT WAS. 

I start getting this song and dance that you can't go back to the way it was. Several stories have ensued: I was grandfathered in... They're no longer available... In fact, now, I can't even get internet anymore because you guys have sold the most you can sell for the areas where I live and where my assistants live. I am completely unable to get back the cable coverage that I previously had. 

Allegedly, all that can be done is to get all my seven phone lines back up and running and working order back on my personal account, without any prior history of my 22 years with Verizon, mind you, so now nobody cares that I've been a loyal customer for so long.  In fact, I have also lost my loyalty credit.  Now JUST my phone lines cost me $375 a month. Now I don't have wifi internet AT ALL. When I go back to cable now I have to spend $75 per location since I happen to have grown over the last year, which is why I needed to have the additional cable service. 

Again everyone is so "compassionate", they're "so sorry", they "hope it all works out"... And so on...

I have never been more discouraged, disappointed, deflated, and disrespected.  It breaks my heart, as somebody who is in the service industry, to be ignored and discounted so severely.

And you know what? You got me. I'm a captive audience. I can't go anywhere else and get the coverage that I need in order to be in business with my phone. I am in real estate, obviously my phone is my livelihood. 

When I was switched back to the personal account, I had zero hotspots so I couldn't even function that way I didn't have phone protection, I didn't have visual voicemail, I was being charged data for a flip phone that can't even access the internet.  I was told I would be called back within 24 hours to help walk me through getting some stuff set back up, phone call never came.

All I want is to be respected and go back to the service and the pricing and the plans that I had prior to May 5th, 2024. When I make a mistake with my clients, I pay for it and take care of it. I find it very hard to believe the Verizon cannot restore me to where I was. 

I am without internet and within 4 days I used up my hotspot high speed data.  

So, what could Verizon have done differently? Not lied to me about being able to provide service that didn't exist and then, when they admitted to the mistake, RESTORE ME TO WHERE I WAS.