Cancelling fios service after two week trial with billing charges

[darrylharr]

I have been a Charter customer for years, working out of my house.  I remote into my office so stable internet and phone service is a must as I have my calls forwarded to my home number when in my home office.  Charter gave me excellent service but Spectrum had not yet made it to this area so speed was an issue.

In late April, two gentlemen from Verizon knocked on my door and after some hard negotiating, convinced me to go with their company, to get faster service at a better price.  They explained to me that I would have a 2-week trial basis before my 2-year contract became effective and if I was not totally satisfied with the service then I could cancel and there would be no charges.   The connection was terrible, much slower than I had with Charter and when it rained, it stopped.  After 12 days of this, on May 9, I called Verizon to cancel my service effective May 11 so I could get Charter back in and get a more reliable service.  The man at Verizon with whom I was speaking was very rude to me, telling me that problems like I suggested were impossible with Fios and that even the White House uses Verizon.  He was very condescending and rude.  I finally requested that he please stop the talking and carry out my request to cancel the service on May 11.  He said fine, its done have a great day.  We hung up and 1 minute later, my service was disconnected, 2 days before I requested it be disconnected, so I had to scramble to get Charter ASAP to get hooked back up, i was totally without service for well over 36 hours.

On June 5th,  I recieved a bill for $93.62 for that 12 days of service, even after the original salesmen told me in no uncertain terms, that if I were not satisfied during the trial period I would not be charged.  I again called Verizon customer service and went through 7 different transfers, each time repeating my claim and each person telling me I should not have been charged for that and they would transfer me to the department that would take care of it.  I was sent to Finance twice, who told me they could only take payments, Customer Service three times who sent me back to finance and finally to billing, being disconnected at least twice during those transfers.  When I finally reached the billing department I was told that regardless of what I was told, that Verizon does not give free service and I was supposed to pay that $93.62.   I asked then to speak to his supervisor, he reluctantly transfered me to her while saying she will just tell me the same thing, and he was right, she also told me that same thing that regardless of what the sales people told me, I had Verizon service for 12 days and I was liable to pay for the activation fee and the time of service.   Again she was very rude and that incensed me, I asked to speak to her supervisor and she promptly told me there was no one above her, she was as high as I could go.  These people need to learn how to communicate with the customers, especially when disputes are in question. 

Charter did hook me back up on May 11th and gave me a new phone number which worked great with the online voice manager and ability to have my voice mails converted to text and emailed to me.  My service was fast again and no problems whatsover, until June 1, 2015, when my phone started acting strange, my voice mail greeting disappeared and the voice manager system on Charter's website showed my voice service was disconnected.  After several days of discussion with Charter, it was discovered that Verizon had illicitly and illegally attempted to port my new number into their system effective 6/1 which looked on Charter's end that I had requested Verizon to provide phone service (which I did not), so Charter changed my rate plan and my billing became much more expensive since they believed I removed the phone from my plan thereby affecting the costs of the other services I had.    On June 5th, this was supposed to have been completed and services restored to Charter, however today, june 9, my phone still remains out of service and there are still issues with Charter regaining the phone number that had been illegally ported to Verizon.

This is all Verizon's fault and yet they are still coming after me for $93.62 for less than 2 weeks of unsatisfactory service that was like going back to dialup.   If I had to recommend Verizon to anyone I would say run and run fast as they do not support their sales staff, who will say anything to get you to sign up, not to mention attempt to steal your phone number out from under you weeks after you move to another company.  With few exceptions, the customer service representatives and especially the billing department representatives are rude. 

[LawrenceC]

Hi darrylharr,

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.