Our situation is frustrating from multiple angles but going to share for the benefit of everyone. #longpostwarning
We switched over to AT&T 12/2022 to take advantage of some major promotional discounts. We were advised by an AT&T representative at Sam's Club that we could switch to AT&T from Verizon, even when on Verizon device payment plans. We would just need to request a payment plan and continue making payments to Verizon for the devices. Even spoke to the "supervisor" and he confirmed stating, "Verizon does this all the time for our customers".
Fast forward to January 2023 and we soon realize the claims by AT&T were untrue. There is no option to have a payment plan at Verizon to pay off our devices, but the entire amount for 2 new iPhones was due immediately upon transfer of our numbers to AT&T.
I went back and forth each month with Verizon. Same cycle - receive a bill for the full amount > call to request a payment plan > denial by Verizon saying they can't do payment plans > setup a one-time payment and promise to pay next month > repeat. We did this for months and paid down to about $1000 remaining balance.
I wasn't able to pay on time, so requested an exception and paid what I could. They told me this would prevent from being reported on my credit report and would prevent it from goint to collections. After this happened a couple of times, I stopped receiving invoices and emails. Nothing for 2 months. So I find out today after receiving a notice from Credit Karma that my score has dropped 44 points, that Verizon has turned me over to outside collections. No notice, no invoice/bill for three months, nothing.
If Verizon is monitoring this, what I'd love to do is actually setup a payment plan like I've asked for since January 2023 and to have the collections item removed from my credit report. I guess another hard lesson learned - DO NOT trust AT&T sales agents and DO NOT believe Verizon's customer service team regarding reporting similar situations to the credit bureaus.
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