Billing Nightmare!!

[mrubio0804]

I have been a long time customer of OVER 10 years with Verizon and have always been happy with my service and the resolutions to any issues that I have had in the past....UNTIL NOW. I am not sure what has changed or what the issue seems to be in getting my billing problem resolved. But this has been a TOTAL nightmare and waste of time. 

Back in Dec of 2021 I added two new Ipads to my current plan and knew that my bill would be pro-rated. I waited for that to happen and then paid my bill via my checking account on MyVerizon app like I do every month, and have for YEARS. 

I was unaware that there had been fraud on my personal checking account and only found out when my bank returned the payment I made to Verizon. I immediately called my bank to resolve the issue. When I thought this had been resolved I attempted the payment again. Low and behold my bank had flagged the amount and transaction as fraud and returned it a second time. Of course I was frustrated and did not want that to happen again so the same exact day that I received notification that my payment was reversed I made a CREDIT CARD payment, not debit card, and nothing to do with my bank account, for obvious reasons since I did not want any issues on my Verizon account. The check payment I made originally was in the amount of $604.81. When I made my credit card payment I rounded up to $605 even. This was paid on the 24th of February and I thought all was good. Thus my nightmare begins.

On Feb 26th I get a text that my services have been disconnected due to non payment. I am confused as I just made a payment two days earlier via my actual credit card. I proceed to call financial services spend over an hour explaining to them that yes there was a payment returned  due to the fraud on my account but the same day I corrected that by making a payment on the account of $605 via a credit card so in reality that should have kept my balance current. I also explained to them that I have NEVER had a return payment on my account previously and have been using my checking account for years and years and never had an issue like this before. He continues to insist that the payment of $604. 81 was credited back to me so the balance was added back on to my bill and that was a current balance. I then explained to him that I was not arguing the fact that it did happen but what I do not understand is where my 3rd payment of $605 dollars made via a credit card and NOT check was applied or how it was returned. After over an hour of this back and forth it FINALLY clicked to him what I was saying, he then states I will get services reinstated and open a ticket to have them review why the system did not reflect the payment of $605 via CC. He said the request could take up to 12 days and I would receive a call back and all would be resolved. I NEVER DID. 

I got busy and travel for work, on one of my trips in Mid March I was in California and get a text that my services will once again be disconnected if I do not make an immediate payment of the "Past Due" balance. I try to chat with a rep who basically is confused as heck, does not see what I am referring to,  no surprise there, and then basically says he is unable to assist me and will need me to call in to Financial Services Again. I call in and then I am told by financial services that they are not able to review billing with me and refer me back to the same department. She also tells me my account is restricted and I have to make a cash payment, I explain I am out of town on a business trip and do not have the time to find a store and go in to make a payment and ask for additional options she say I have none, only cash. I tell her that when I log into the app I still see the option to pay via CC. And ask if she is seeing something different, to which I get a response of "Oh, it does? Ok well use your CC". She then says she can set up an extended promise to pay for me, for an additional charge of course, while they look into this again and to contact them to pay an additional $966.36 by April 11th. I say fine and proceded to try and chat with a billing agent again to no gain. Again.

I am now on chat 3 and call 4 spending hours via both methods with no resolution so I end up just paying the $966.36 and in the mean time I am getting billed for multiple disconnect fees and my bill continues to grow and grow. By now March they have my bill at a whopping $1711.38. This mean all the fees are in there and No payments have been credited to my account. So after I make the additional payment mentioned above of $966.36 I get Aprils bill wanting me to pay $1320.99!! 

So again, no one has called me to resolved my so called ticket, I have now been told multiple times that this is being reviewed and NOTHING. Again another disconnection, this time while I was in Florida end of March into early April. So here I go again calling in for the 5th time and I FINALLY get a rep that is in the US and she gets what I am saying! So she tells me wait, the billing is right but your payment shows as a credit so that seems off, but she is again from financial services and not able to help me resolve this, so here I go and I try calling billing again and was on hold and then hung up on. She guaranteed me there would be a note on my account and that when I do contact billing they will see what she is referring to and investigate so I said fine. I told her that I see how the bill is reflecting charges and agree on some of the charges, but the additional fees are due to the missing payment of $605 on my account. I tell her since I am out of town I have to wait to get home to print all of them out and review them to make sure I am not missing anything on my end. To this date, she has been the most helpful and took the time to look at all the bills with me, had I had the bills in front of me on paper I am confident she would have resolved it if she could. 

After paying Verizon over $1500, and hours of my time wasted NO ONE has resolved ANYTHING still. Today ANOTHER disconnection text and since I am finally back in town, I print all my bills and review them for hours going all the way back to August 2021, I see everything lines up until we get to February's Bill and the dreaded $605 CC payment. So I decide to call in and ask straight for a supervisor to avoid wasting time and the middle person, I am supposedly connected to a supervisor and we start to go over the bills. I explain everything, we are going in circles again for over an hour. She is seeing what I am seeing but again in the system they are showing that the payment was applied, but they are not considering that since the previous payment was returned same day it canceled it out. So I am working with her she has me on hold gets her "lead" involved and we are getting somewhere when the call fails and I can no longer hear her or her me. So then I am forced to hang up the call and NO CALL BACK! So I try to call back in again and am not able to get a live agent at all, now I am only being directed to the Financial services department automated system, which of course is closed by this time, and nothing. So I decide to Chat as once again Services need to be restored and I REFUSE to continue paying for a balance that is NOT accurate and continue to pay for reconnect fees due to their system error! I chat with a rep for again over an hour, then he is telling me "look ignore the returned payments and you will see that your balance is correct as of March's bill, and then from there just deduct the successful payments and you will see the balance is correct." I say Perfect, its what I did at the end on my own before calling you all to find an easier way of tracking the payments, I break it down for him, and say if that was the case and ALL payments were applied to date, my balance would be $605.04 cents lower, he says bare with me, then comes back to say I opened a ticket. They are not able to restore service or correct the payment issue so again nothing they can do. He says you will have to call them in the AM and see if they can restore services and when I go on to explain that I do not understand why they are not able to correct the issue he goes on to say that he does not see an issue and that everything is correct when he Had just told me a ticket would be opened to review! He again tells me I was refunded $604.81 and that is why the $605 payment does not matter. Oh Lord! 

I am so disappointed! I have proved multiple times OVER and OVER that there is an issue, every time I do that, they seem to agree that it is just as confusing but NO ONE can tell me where the payment of $605 went except that it was applied to that bill but my balance did not decrease. And they all see what I see, a payment credited and then added back on. Everyone gets confused because of the check payment so I spend so much time getting them to understand that this was a completely different payment and that it was not applied, if it had, I would have had NO forwarding balance and would have been current. 

At this point I have lost all faith in Verizon, I will be calling again tomorrow and more then likely going to start looking for another carrier. I am disappointed that I have been with them for so long and that I am going through all of this and nothing has been resolved. Its been almost 3 MONTHS of this! I had a horrible thing happen to me, and Verizon has punished me and capitalized at my expense, not to mention is essentially doing the same thing to me! 

If anyone knows of a billing Manager or supervisor that I can speak to directly preferably in the US, please let me know! I need a higher up to actually look into this and someone who cares about their job, and Verizons customers.

Thank you all in Advance! 

Mara