I recently signed up for Verizon Fios service, and I was sent a $200 gift card (virtual card, with a PIN number). I decided to use the card to purchase an item from Verizon Shop (a Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller), and after ordering the item, I received an email from Verizon Wireless that says "XX, We received your order" in the subject line (XX being my first name), with a PDF purchase receipt attached. The total cost was $90.62 with taxes included, all to be taken out of the gift card. 1.5 hours later I got an email from Verizon Wireless that says "XX, You've successfully canceled your order". This did not make sense since I did not cancel my order, but the email also said: "You were not billed for any merchandise". The email also had a link that says "View order details". I clicked on it hoping it will tell me why the order was canceled, but all I got was a message that says: "Looks like something went wrong! Please try again."
I decided to contact the customer service using the Chat option, just to understand why this order was canceled, but that was not successful. I must have talked to 8-10 agents because I keep getting transferred to agents from different departments, and the chat usually disconnects after a while because the session expires (the extend session button does not work), which means I have to start from scratch to explain things. All agents were courteous, and they did their best within the script given to them ("we understand how frustrating this is", "we know disconnecting and starting from scratch is very annoying" yada yada). After hearing the same tone of "empathetic" answers 30 times in a row, it becomes stale and AI-like, but it is not their fault, they are trying to do their job . Overall, none of the agents could figure out why this order was cancelled. At the end I realized this is not going anywhere, and I decided to call customer service. One agent said he cannot say why this order was canceled, but he will make sure the funds will be returned back to the gift card. I asked if I will get some sort of a confirmation about it, he said I would get an email confirmation within 2 hours (which never happened).
Today, I checked my gift card balance, and I saw that the funds have still not been refunded (I want to remind the original cancellation email says "you were not billed for any merchandise". I decided to try my luck with the customer service again, but this time I thought there is not much meaning in trying to figure out why the order was canceled; instead I decided to ask for a refund (restore balance to the gift card). Again, after going through 3-4 departments and 8-10 agents, none of them could do anything. Some asked for the order number and location ID, some asked for the gift card number, but all they did was transferring me to another person after 15-20 minutes. This was, if the session did not expire. If the session got expired, then it meant I would need to start the whole thing from scratch. At some point, one agent said (I do not remember which department he was from), he will give me phone numbers to the Rebate Department, and he will stay on the chat line until the issue was resolved. I talked to a gentlemen from the Rebate Department, who asked for the gift card number, worked on it for a while, and said he cannot do anything and I need to talk to the Prepaid Department. At this point the whole thing was already feeling like a joke, and I just decided to go along with it, literally with no hope that the issue would be resolved. The Prepaid Department managed to be the best. The agent asked for my name, verified my email address, the gift card number (or maybe that was another agent asking for the gift card number, I can't remember anymore), and at the end, she said "she will resend the email in 48 hours". I asked which email she is talking about. To that, she said she will re-send the gift card number email. When I asked how it is going to help me, she said she doesn't know, and that's all she could do.
At this point, I yield. I have probably spent around 4 hours for this (yes, not very smart, I agree), and I decided it is not worth pursing further. Overall, I do not know why my order was canceled in the first place, why the order details button does not work, why were funds taken although the cancellation email says otherwise, or why the gift card is not refunded, but the best part is, nobody from Verizon knows anything about these things also I can say this after talking to 20+ different people. I decided to write this, so that if anyone else is having a similar problem, do not waste your time, it will likely go nowhere. Still, good luck!
