What is wrong with you people?
Wootings
Enthusiast - Level 2

I just switched the 2 other phones in the house onto my prepaid plan to all be on a "family" plan.  Seemed fairly straightforward.

 

Then one of the phones a couple days later stops working and says a payment has to be made.  Which makes no sense...because all 3 phones are on the same plan, and autopay is set up.

I go to the website and the "Chat with us" thing says "Looks like this isn't a Verizon Prepaid number. For help, please contact us at 1-800-922-0204. Thank you."

Ummmm...yes, yes this is a prepaid number.  But it is literally impossible now to try to use the chatbot, or get to a chat agent, to get anything done.  So the website is totally useless.

I call that number and it says "you need to make a payment" - eventually, after you have to waste most of your life trying to navigate the crime-against-mankind telephony system.  So it offers to "pay just this line or pay the whole account."  I pay the whole account.

But that phone still doesn't work.  It still shows $0 balance on that line in my account, but $127 in the whole account that I just added...way before a payment was due.

And there is no way to bring that line back to life.  There is no way to proceed in the telephony system - which keeps saying "you need to make a payment."  There's no way to get to a human.  THERE IS NO WAY TO USE THIS SERVICE.

 

So...What is wrong with you people?  And how is it that you remain in business?  I am absolutely horrified by the fact that it is literally impossible to do the most basic things with this service.  

10 Replies
Tigerstep
Specialist - Level 3

Never go prepaid if you value customer service.

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Wootings
Enthusiast - Level 2

"Customer service" is one thing.  Actually being able to use the service, at all...is kind of another.

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as40
Enthusiast - Level 2

Hey, at least the money-taking part of the service works! Kudos to Verizon, I say.

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vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

Being able to stay connected at all times is essential, @Wootings. We are here to help in any way we can. Are you having trouble with your services?

 

GeorginaG_VZW

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Wootings
Enthusiast - Level 2

Oh, eventually managed to get to an actual person through the horrifically-bad telephony system you have...and after a while somehow they got that other line to come back to life.  No real explanation of what happened...or how to prevent it from happening again.

 

Still getting the "Looks like this isn't a Verizon Prepaid number. For help, please contact us at 1-800-922-0204. Thank you." message on the chat thing on the website though, so I still can't get any help online.  If you want to take a look at that, that would be great.

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vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

@Wootings

 

While it's great to know that all of your lines are working now, there's a lot more on this that we would need to know about in order to best assist you. What number are you calling that is giving you such trouble with reaching a live person? When you see this message that you had described that directs you to call 800.922.0204 , are you using your own My Verizon login, or someone else's on your account? Have you ever been able to access your My Verizon account online before or after adding additional lines to your own account?

 

When you have several lines on a Prepaid Family account, you would need to have enough funds on the Owner's line to replenish all of the lines. Adding additional lines like you had described would have resulted in some sort of proration that they needed to align all of the lines to the same replenishment date as well, as seen here: https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/prepaid-family-account-faqs/ . Based on your description, that sounds like the most-likely cause for some of your lines to not work after merging.

 

RussellM_VZW

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Wootings
Enthusiast - Level 2

If you'd read my initial post, you'd see that I opted to pay for the entire account in the first place.  And then nothing happened.

 

And yes, that 800 number has a telephony system that is clearly intentionally designed to make it as difficult as possible to get a human to talk to.  Especially when it thinks you haven't, for example, just paid the entire amount for the whole account and just tells you that "customer service reps are no longer able to take payment over the hpone blah blah" and then probably hangs up on you.

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EVAMAR65
Newbie

I have regreted every single day that I switched to Verizon. I have 2 phones paid off and a small balance on a 3rd phone and 1 Gismo. I'm leaving Verizon when they are all paid for. They are horrible 

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Wootings
Enthusiast - Level 2

Hey, here we are 2 weeks later, and when I go to the website and try to chat, I still get:

 

Looks like this isn't a Verizon Prepaid number. For help, please contact us at 1-800-922-0204. Thank you.

 

So...no one is doing anything about that.  Despite the "concern" being shown in this thread by Verizon people.

I just discovered that there's no way to get an actual receipt for monthly payments from the Verizon website.  Which is...insane.  I need to submit it as an expense.  Which means I need a receipt.  After searching the issue online, it appears that the only way to get an actual receipt is to chat with a service representative.  But guess what I can't do, because of the error noted above?

 

So I will continue to ask, what is wrong with you people?  You don't even provide a receipt anywhere in your system for your customers who pay you money?  And you still can't figure out that my phone number is, in fact, a prepaid number, so that I could use the chat?  You're charging me for a prepaid number.  3 of them, actually.  So if you're convinced that I don't have a prepaid number, maybe my service should be free...?

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Ann154
Community Leader
Community Leader

If you are needing to submit a payment receipt or a copy of the bill for an expense report, I'm not sure having a prepaid account is a good idea. With prepaid accounts there are no bills and you have less access to your call records or messages logs. If you really need that information so you can provide documentation of your usage for a business, you should consider switching the lines to a postpaid account. 

I'm most definitely NOT a VZW employee. If a post answered your question, please mark it as the answer.

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