billing and gift card snafu - horrible customer experience

[tonymess]

I recently received my Verizon wireless bill.  I went to pay it with a gift card that I received from upgrading to the new iPhone.  It had a little over $91 left on it.  When I went to pay, the card would not cover the entire bill, and it told me to enter the amount I wanted credited.  I entered the full $91+ in the system and pressed enter. 

The system started thinking and then about 45 seconds later, I got the message that "the system was currently experiencing problems- please try again later"

I waited 20 minutes and went back into the account.  The bill was still there and I went to pay by gift card and now the system told me I had $0 dollars left on it.  That is when the fun started.

I spoke to 4 different people in customer service.  The first person dropped my call. The second told me to call the number on the back of the card (I told them that Verizon never sent me a card but sent me an email).  They told me to call the one number on the email.  I did and that number offered no options to actually talk to anyone but it was kind enough to tell me my card had zero balance.  I called again, pressed the option for billing and got put into tech support.  This person had no clue how to help me so they transferred me to another person who really had no clue how to help me.  They did say they would escalate my issue to internal support and I would get an answer in 24-48 hours.

Now we are 48 hours later and I have heard nothing.  What the hell Verizon?!?!?!

How can you not be taking care of this in a timely manner?  I am extremely disappointed at the level of service you are providing.  Honestly, when did you guys become as bad as Comcast in helping customers get issues resolved?

Oh  and don't get me going about why I needed to even go into the sytem 2 times to apply my gift card credit.  Why couldn't I just apply the entire amount and have a credit on my account for the next bill?  Would that have been so tough?