Verizon cannot figure out how to complete Business to Personal line transfer-- how to escalate?

[jgm02010]

On 04/06/21, I requested that my company transfer the liability of my primary phone number from their Verizon business account to my Verizon personal account. The company completed all necessary steps to do so, and I received an automated email from Verizon instructing me to call their customer service line to complete the transfer.

This is when my saga began. For the past month, I have spent countless hours on the phone with Verizon representatives who are all stumped and unable to complete the transfer of liability, despite having all required documentation.

• 3 separate times I have been told that my issue was escalated to the representative's supervisor, and that the supervisor will be contacting me within 24-48 hours. No one has ever followed up with me. It's becoming apparent that this is just a tactic their reps use when they cannot solve an issue in a timely manner.
• A representative told me I need to sign up for a personal plan in order to accept the line. I did this and also purchased an iPhone 12 Pro. I have already paid my first bill. I'm now considering returning the phone and contesting all other charges with my credit card company because I made these purchases with the understanding that it would resolve the line transfer issue (as I was told by the rep). That has clearly NOT been the case and, whether intentional or not, I was clearly misled by the Verizon rep.
• Another representative told me that the line transfer was 'in line' behind 300+ other requests submitted by my company (this was the first and last time anyone mentioned there being a queue for what must be an automated process). She said it would take a week for this queue to be cleared and at that point she would be able to complete my transfer. She promised that she would call me back 8 days later, on 05/06/21 at 11AM. Unsurprisingly, she did not call me back and the representative who took my call when I followed up said she was unable to connect with her.
• I spent over an hour on the phone with one representative when the call 'mysteriously' disconnected. Despite having provided a call back number at the very beginning of the call, the representative did not attempt to reconnect with me and resume addressing my issue (I'm not surprised by this but it's horribly unprofessional).
• Verizon representatives have run a credit check for me 3 separate times in the past month. I have been 'approved' every time, despite already having an existing personal account and plan with them. Having to repeatedly run my credit is ridiculous-- I'm lucky I don't have any major financing I need to apply for in the near future. 

I'm at my wit's end and am honestly just hoping this post is reviewed by the vzw_customer_support account, who I have already DMed and received no response from. The number I am trying to transfer has been my primary phone number for the past 15+ years, which is the only reason I'm fighting so hard to keep it. At this point I'm wondering if I should turn to Twitter to incessantly tweet my grievances at Verizon, as well as report them to the BBB (particularly in regards to making a sale of a plan with the promise that it would fix my issue). Does anyone have advice for how to escalate an issue that is clearly rooted in Verizon's internal system??

[Tigerstep · Accepted solution]

A transfer authorization only lasts for 14 days, you may have to start from the beginning since the original authorization would have expired long since then.

A TYS call takes less than 5 minutes to complete. On rare occasions, you get a "stuck in switch" error, but those typically resolve within 24 hrs. To be this long, someone clearly doesn't know what they are doing.

There is no escalating to a supervisor, whoever told you that was blatantly lying. If there was a system error, a supervisor would have ran into the same problem. This issue is handled through a team called CORE and they don't call customers. It's that rep's responsibility to follow up after any technical issue was resolved.

I hope you don't mean a rep told you you sign up for new service which means a new number. If that's the case, science needs to make being able to smack someone over the phone a reality. The ONLY requirement to move a phone line from one account to the other, assuming everything else is fine such as no past due balances and credit issues is having a compatible plan. Once the plan is matched to the one you have, it's a simple matter of completing the order and you getting an email to accept it.

Transfer requests are automated. In the rare instance there was a switch error, CORE is called after 24 hrs of it being stuck to correct it.

The good news is that any credit check is internal since you have an existing account. The bad news is that instead of keeping skilled transfer agents, Verizon replaced them with incompetent ones. I was a former top TYS agent who could do these things easily, even knew work arounds other agents didn't when there as an error. Anything for the multi billion companies to save a buck, right?

Forum support isn't going to be able to do much since it's all scripted. I would dial #PORT from the business phone to generate a transfer PIN and find out the company's account number to port out then over the temp number I believe they told you would fix it -- Google Voice is a good way to do this without getting another carrier involved. At this stage, Verizon's CS environment is atrocious.

[jgm02010]

@Tigerstep Thank you so much for the extremely thoughtful and thorough reply. With the additional context you were able to provide, it became clear to me that there was going to be no resolution if I kept trying to push through the 'stuck' transfer. I updated the email associated with my personal account (just an extra precaution as I was paranoid about any crossed wires with the existing transfer request) and asked my company to re-submit the transfer to that email address. After that, I was able to successfully move the line to my personal account with relatively few hiccups. Now I'm just stuck waiting for my new device's Registration Pin, but apparently delays with receiving that are not uncommon for recently ported numbers. Unimpressed does not even begin to describe how I feel about Verizon's handling of this situation. I seriously appreciate your help here-- thank you!  🙂  

[vzw_customer_support]

We know you've been having some trouble with this. We do want to get to the bottom of this. The first thing we'd like to check is to see if the personal account did come through. Let's get this resolved. Please send us a Private Note for assisstance.

[vzw_customer_support]

Whew! It sounds like you've been through quite a lot. Let's get to the bottom of this and see what's going on. First, we'd like to see if your personal account is showing up in our system. Please send us a Private Note for assitance.