Removal of Fight Charge

[colmruthy]

On May 2nd, my husband attempted to access streaming rights for the Mayweather/Paquio Fight, while  he was at work. Thanks to the many ads by Verizon advertising the fight, he thought he would be able to watch it live on his computer. Via Verizon’s online service, he entered his credit card information a few hours prior to the fight’s start. When he realized that the fight would not in fact be shown live, but that it would be present on our cable box the next day, he immediately called Verizon’s help line to get the charge removed. After an extraordinary long wait time, the call was answered by Verizon. The Verizon employee, who after hearing his request that he would like to have the fight removed, was told to call back the next day and speak to Billing, and ask for the fight to be removed then. There was no account information given or requested during this conversation, but the implication from the Verizon employee who answered the phone was that this wouldn’t be much of an issue, and a simple phone call would take care of the charge. This entire phone exchange took place on the landline at my husband’s place of employment, phone number {edited for privacy}. Please note that this is a different phone number than the one on our personal account, which was the account my husband was calling about. My husband never watched the fight in any capacity, not that day or the day Verizon actually aired it.

Erroneously, my husband did not call the next day. However once we received the bill containing the charge for the fight he never watched, then informed me, and asked me to take care of the situation. On June 11, I started a chat with a Verizon employee via your Chat Support, and told them what happened. They assured me they would open an inquiry into the situation and someone would be getting back with me about it. This never happened. On June 18, the day our bill was due, I called and spoke to a customer service rep, to see if I could get the charge removed. She refused. I had her speak to my husband. She informed him that at no time is there a record of his exchange with the Verizon employee on May 2nd (the one who never asked for any details) and because of this, no charge would be removed. She was adamant that we would have the pay the charge any way, and that because the fight was streamed to our box 24 hours after is happened, we had to pay for it. It didn’t matter that we had asked for the charge to be removed, nor that the fight was never watched or downloaded.

This entire exchange with Verizon saddens and frustrates me. Up until this point, we have received nothing but fabulous and helpful customer service, and the service we’ve received from Verizon has been extremely satisfactory. We’ve enjoyed being customers of Verizon, but we refuse to pay for a service or product that we not only did not enjoy, but asked for its removal prior to it even occurring.

We paid our May bill for everything except for the fight charge. We will not pay a charge for a fight that we did not watch. Please remove this charge from our bill and record. We are also sorry to say that if this charge is not promptly removed, we will be paying our Early Termination Fee, leaving your service, and giving our money to another cable company.

[LawrenceC]

Hi colmruthy,

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.

Under "My Support Cases" you will find a link to the private board where you and the agent may exchange information. The title of your post is the link. This should be checked on a frequent basis, as the agent may be waiting for information from you before they can proceed with any actions. To ensure you know when they have responded to you, at the top of your support case there is a drop down menu for support case options. Open that and choose "subscribe". Please keep all correspondence regarding your issue in the private support portal.