My 2 year old accidently ordered NBA league pass while playing with the remote
gerber69
Enthusiast - Level 2

I called upon receiving my bill and was told that they could not cancel or refund. I was basically told it was all my fault because it asks if you are sure several times before ordering. Well how about using a series of buttons instead of the same button over and over because that is what kids do. I would expect better customer service on this matter or at least some type of resolution as I notice I'm not the only one with this problem. When I asked for the customer retention dept. I was told there isn't one. I'll be looking into other options for my TV / Internet / phone.

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sgip2000
Newbie

For the future, it would be a good idea to set a password for all purchases.

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gerber69
Enthusiast - Level 2

Our installer did that for us on 2 of the 3 tvs  It would be really nice if you had to hit a series of different buttons instead of just OK.  We never order anything and would be nice to get a little customer service.

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prisaz
Legend

@sgip2000 wrote:

For the future, it would be a good idea to set a password for all purchases.


There is. It is called parental controls, and also allows you to enter a different purchase password.

My favorite was my dog ate my homework. I too had to pay for adult programs that were ordered at times when I was not at home and everyone else was with me. Yes I was not pleased. So I made SURE I had the parental controls on and purchase pin enabled. But my box had been conveniently reset by Verizon mutable times and that cleared the password. First days of FIOS TV.

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nickmalthus
Enthusiast - Level 2

For the future, after identifying this problem I have set a pin number so no more services can be ordered for the life of my current contract.

As the original poster stated, Verizon has set up their set top boxes with no purchasing pin in place and have designed the purchasing process to default to buy. The result of these design choices is that any type of unintentional button press of the most prominent button on the remote will most likely end in a purchase. Seemingly this so happens to be in the best economic interests of Verizon.

There is also a legal liability aspect to our issue in that the NBA league pass has contractual obligations that may not be clearly stated during a set top box purchase. These obligations are quit different from the purchase or subscription of any of the other set top box service. Neither of us have seen the contents of the screen so we cannot confirm if it is the same or different. If anyone could provide insight into this it would be appreciated.  

By posting to this thread I have also established that there is a pattern to this problem and more than one subscriber has had this same issue. 

Finally, "stuff happens" is not a sufficient resolution to our issue. If I told Verizon that I couldn't pay my bill because "stuff happens" they would promptly exercise their full legal rights and turn me over to a collections agency without question. If the cost of the service was trivial I would be inclined to agree with you. However, we were both coerced to pay $200+ for a service that had no utility to us and was not resalable. In my circumstances this extortion far outweighed any perceived value I believed I was receiving from Verizon services. I would hope that Verizon would redress our grievances monetarily, take corrective action on their programming contracts to provide better flexibility, or enhance their purchasing process to fail safe so customers only subscribe to channels they willfully agree to. This may include a grace period or follow up communication to confirm the contractual purchase.

At the very least this thread will document a know issue with the Verizon Fios service that others in the future may refer to.

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spacedebris
Master - Level 2

Your right, the system should default to "NO" and you have to move it to "YES" to continue so accidental orders cannot be made.

But on the other side of the coin, from their perspective.... How do THEY know that it was done by accident by your 2yo? Nothing against you in particular but...I used to work for one of the cable companies back in my college days. Not Verizon, but one of the competitors. And I was getting calls every day from people that were claiming that they didnt know that they ordered it, or that the kids ordered it, or some other excuse so they could avoid paying for the service. My favorite was that the dog was chewing on the remote and ordered 17 adult movies but only did it after the previous one was done. Smiley Very Happy Now, I had great sympothy for these customers and I suspect that a large number of them were telling the truth, BUT many were just trying to get something for free. Now the company I was working for set forth a policy due to the number of credits being issued by the employees on these charges, that said, "If it is on the bill, the customer will not get credit for it anylonger. It is their responsibility to monitor their own systems and if their system orders it, they are responsible".  Now myself and many of othe other employee's had issues with this but since we worked for them we didnt have any say so and just had to live with it like the customers did. This sounds like what Verizon is doing as well. It would be nice if they changed the way the orders were done, but quite honestly this is the way many companies have been doing it for years (more than I care to count) and it is not likely to change

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gerber69
Enthusiast - Level 2

I asked to have it cancelled and I would pay for the time it was ordered until now and they said I had to pay the full $190. Again I tried to come to some kind of resolution and they have just blown me off so as soon as my contract is up I'm done!! Also switching my wireless this weekend.  What a way to lose a 15+ year customer and now I'll tell everyone I know about it.

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nickmalthus
Enthusiast - Level 2

My toddler must have done the same thing and ordered the league pass at our house. I freaked out when I saw my bill and after talking to customer support a couple of times I got the same answer, it was a packaged deal and it could not be cancelled or prorated. I have written a formal complaint to both Verizon and the NBA but I am not hopeful that I will get any type of meaningful response back. Even though I have to pay for the channel I canceled it anyway out of principle. As was earlier stated in the post the normal fail safe behavior in a user interface is to set the default option to cancel so accidents like this don't happen with the same button being pressed twice. There is a world of difference between a three dollar movie rental and a several hundred dollar half year contract and this should be legally conveyed to the customer during purchase. I didn't see the screen myself but I am quite sure that if my toddler got past it there was nothing substantial. In the end discontent customers will ensure lost future revenue in equal or greater amounts than what is contested and it always perplexes me as to why businesses don't act objectively and treat their customer's justly.

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