Verizon erroneously charged me over $1500, and will not credit it back.

[prosthetix]

Summary: Verizon failed to cancel an autopay account they confirmed via service call they would cancel, and quietly charged us $1690 over two years for an inactive, unused account at an address we were not living at.

I've been looking for a resolution to this issue I've been trying to resolve with Verizon's support team(s) since May.

In June 2021, my partner and I moved from Address One, to Address Two, renting both apartments for a month. The representative advised us over the phone that they were unable to move a service to the new address while keeping it at our old address for the month. We required a connection the entire time, so she instructed us to pick a date for Address One's service to be disconnected, and on the same service call create a new account for Address Two. The Verizon representative assured us she submitted the scheduled account closure for Apartment One at the end of the month. Unbeknownst to me, my partner connected her credit card to Account Two's auto payment instead of mine, as expected. This detail is relevant later.

Two years later (June 2023), we begin to move from Apartment Two to Apartment Three. While transferring accounts my partner and I discover that we were both being charged monthly for Verizon Fios through autopay. Digging into the issue, we discover that Verizon failed to follow through on their promise to close the Apartment One account; for two years they have been charging for an address with no service or usage, which they have promised and scheduled to disconnect. I was unaware that my partner had set up the new account with her credit card, and had assumed the payments on my statement were Verizon charging me for our Address Two service. After all, why would they charge me for an account they'd scheduled to close? Because they never closed it. They charged us $1690 for an unused account over two years.

We called Verizon back in May, and a service representative confirmed the details of the story, and told me they would credit the paid amounts to my current account. He told us that Verizon would call to confirm the details in a month. He gave us an issue number, and assured us he was recording everything. Well, that was easy! Unfortunately not.

Verizon did not call to confirm, so we were forced to follow up the day after. I spoke to another representative, who would eventually understand the issue, inform us that there was no record of the previous call, and that she would need to elevate it to a superior to confirm. No superior was available at the moment, and the call was ended pending a superior.

We later call again, and insist on speaking to a supervisor, on June 28th, 2023. We are eventually connected to Allison. Allison again confirms the details of the situation, that Verizon confirmed over the phone they would be disconnecting the Address One account at the end of July 2021, that they failed to do so, and charged an unused, unacessed account for two years for over $1500. She told us that Verizon could not apply the owed value as account credit, but that they could send us a check for the value. She also explained that she needed to complete the investigation into the matter, and that she would email or call us at the conclusion of this investigation by July 10th, or ten days (plus the weekend) from the call.

As I had now come to expect with my Verizon interactions so far, this follow-up call/email did not happen.

On July 11th, I again called Verizon Fios support, and spoke to an extremely kind customer service personnel who explained that she could not view the record of the account beyond the history of Address Two, that she couldn't view the record for Address One, and couldn't apply an account credit or refund of the size we are owed by Verizon.

We just moved again (to an Address Four), and perhaps my better judgement, continued our Fios service for the time being. I can't imagine that I will continue to do so if this isn't resolved by September, as Verizon has only been giving us the run-around and wasting our time. If a Verizon Fios employee happens to read this frustrating tale; please reach out? I don't want to cancel my decade-long patronage because of a handful of problematic customer service staff, but I am afraid I won't have a choice. 

[kh_jenn]

Hi prosthetix,

Your issue has been escalated to a Verizon agent. Please check your Private Messenger Inbox for a message from a Verizon Support agent. You can find your Inbox by clicking on the envelope icon next to your avatar at the top right corner of this page. Response times may vary. Please continue to check your Inbox for a reply from a Verizon agent. Please direct all correspondence concerning your issue to the agents who will be assisting you privately.