Verizon ruined credit report on closed account without even sending a bill awful customer service

[verizon_is_abusive]

There are so many of us who are disappointed and frustrated by verizons cruel, predatory, and unfair practices when it comes to credit reporting. My wife and I merged accounts in September of 2020 in the midst of COVID as an effort to reduce household costs. We thought we completely closed out her account and had paid the balance in full… that is until we were recently trying to refinance our mortgage in Mid February 2021 and had it come up on a credit report that there was a collections claim by Verizon for $52. They maliciously without proper notification placed my wife account into collections immediately dropping her credit score over 200 points less to around 600 from a rating of over 800 from 1 week prior to this. We learned that apparently after closing the account and thinking we had paid the bill in total and additional charge of $52 was placed on the old account and not transferred over to the current. Despite being fully capable of emailing, texting, and utterly inundating customers with all the latest offers… this same communications company made only the minimal effort to alert us about the outstanding fee which we only learned about through running a credit report.  Almost daily they send texts about upgrading service or some other promotion but are unable to contact us about an outstanding bill for 4 months and then destroy a loyal customers credit rating over $52? As many other seem to have had a similar experience we have been trying to sort the matter out over the phone with various representatives who are mostly unknowledgeable and not even able to understand the issue after waiting 20-45 minutes per call just to reach a human being.  It’s an impenetrable complication for the customer service reps and the terrible phone system to handle because this is technically a closed account at issue so they all say they can’t even access the record for it. When we are able to escalate the call to a supervisor they have switched us directly to the collections agency which is not the one who has any ability to remove this mark from the credit report, it was put there by verizon and can only be removed by verizon. The bill has now been paid… we have been told it may take weeks or even up to 90 days for verizon to even notify the credit agencies of payment which still leaves a huge ding in our credit report for the next 7 years as an account that was put in collections and paid. We have been customers of verizon paying bills on time for over a decade each, for verizon to be this disrespectful and abusive to customers is outrageous. This will potentially cost us and other customers thousands of dollars in the future because this company is so callous and malicious. It’s nearly impossible to reach an appropriate supervisor or manager on what they call the “Recovery” team (800-852-1922) to even discuss the issue with unless you have unlimited time to call and be on hold… and call back when you are disconnected or routed countless times to the wrong department into an endless loop of poor customer service and lengthy holds. We have now had half a dozen representative conversations in which we were told  a “manager” will call back within 24-48… not a single call back has happened yet. Now looking into what steps we can take in bringing this to the BBB and New York State Consumer Protections Bureau. 

[vzw_customer_support]

Our National Recovery Operations (NRO) team is the team that processes credit disputes and communicates with the credit bureaus. Verizon is legally required to send Adverse Action Letters to  customers. There are different types of letters and they are delivered by mail or My Verizon, based on the preference settings. When did the our NRO last work on the closed account?

[verizon_is_abusive]

It's your NRO team... how are we as customers supposed to know the activities of your NRO team.  We received insufficient legal notice that there was an overdue balance on the closed account which we believed had a zero balance. Verizon did not send any "Adverse Action Letter", we only discovered the issue when a credit report was run and then subsequently a letter from a 3rd party collection agency arrived. Verizon had all the same information (email, phone number, mailing address) as the collections agency... yet chose not to send anything relevant to this issue but was able to send plenty of offers of new services and phone upgrades. 

[vzw_customer_support]

We definitely want to do all that we can to assist you with this issue. We will be sending you a Private Note, so we can continue.

[Soon2beformerVZcust]

I'm going through the same situation. I was passed along to 5 different people yesterday and finally spoke to someone about a hit on my credit from 2016 and simply said that Verizon can't remove it. This was an outstanding bill from years ago that has since been paid. I've currently been paying Verizon $180 per month since 2017. The outstanding bill came from me canceling my old service and setting up a new one when I switched companies. I thought I had the old account taken care of but found out that it was not. After moving to a new home...I received nothing in the mail from Verizon. Actually surprised they let me open a new account without taken care of a past balance. But after yesterday, and being on the phone with Verizon for 2 1/2 hours, they gave me a pin to transfer my number over to Sprint. So tomorrow I get to start a new path with Sprint. Hoping their customer support and focus is much better than Verizon. It's amazing to me that Verizon does not work with people on this credit bureau issue. Hospitals do, Service Companies do, Utility companies do...but not Verizon. And this is coming from someone who has been paying $180 a month to this company. And has had to pay thousands of extra dollars in higher interest rates for the past 5 years due to a mismanaged communications group at Verizon. And once paid...still won't remove it. I guess they really don't care or want my business....that's the only thing that is clear in this situation to me.

[Soon2beformerVZcust]

They are butal. I've paid a ton of money to the company and feel they stab their customers in the back with this. My score due to Verizon is hovering at a 695-705 between the 3 bureaus. So due to Verizon, I'm paying thousands extra a year in higher interest rates. I recently tried to refi my home and the mortgage company said that my report is OUTSTANDING, but due to the Verizon piece they have to put me in a higher rate bracket. I hope you were able to have your problem solved. If you did, please let me know how you did it. Thanks so much!

[kirvedx]

I can relate to this:

I started Verizon service almost 5 years ago (4 years and 9 months). A few months in my phone was stolen. At this time the deductible for smart phones skyrocketed to 250 from the 50 it used to be and I had a bill due and another coming out. I chose to grab a prepaid while I budgeted the deductible and 2 bills; making sure with Verizon I'd be okay to do that (I was under contract and financed).

I was told I'd be okay; but when I went to pay-up the bills and activate service on the replacement device they informed me that my account had been charged off. 

Verizon did honor what the reps told me, admitting that their representatives provided wrong information - but that they would honor what was said and rewrite my contract.

As it was rewritten the underwriter could not figure a way to add my phone to a new contract with no amount due (insurance claim), but to then add the Galaxy Book to the contract with its remainder due. He offered me to add the Galaxy Book's amount to the contract under the phone - explaining that as long as I was okay with waiting to upgrade the phone until the device payments were made in total; it would be no problem to do it that way.

I agreed, and was informed that aside from the single collections notice I would get - I could ignore it and would not get another (it was sent but not received yet because the House of Recovery sends those notices automatically upon account acquisition). I was informed that the House of Recovery would remove my account from their system, and I would know my contract was fulfilled by paying attention to the amounts due online as I paid for my service each month and made my device payments.

3 years pass by - no notice. I waited until this point in time to get on a better upgrade cycle for the latest Note devices (with this latest Note 20 being the last one). I've long since paid off both devices - my accounts reflects the payments and the status; yet when I attempted to finance the new device I was denied, explained by the system that I owed money and needed to contact Verizon.

I have been on the phone for at least 72 hours, in circles, and more circles, and more circles. I've been hung up on, spent whole days on chat just to have it disconnect as they were doing something they promised they'd do. I've contacted House of Recovery who said "we'll look at it and get back to you" but never do; when I call they insist that they do not see a note from Verizon that the "tablet amount was transferred under the phone under the new contract" - even though the amount clearly shows as such, insisting further that they don't see a note from Verizon that the phone was covered by insurance.

Well then how in the world does my new contract - which supersedes the old contract - show very clearly that my phone amount is the tablets' remainder as of the close of the old contract; and that the tablet has no amount due?

Somewhere along the way, House of Recovery seems to believe they have the legal authority to deny Verizon's authority in RE-WRITING my contract, and as such, nullifying the old contract and superseding it with the new.

They refuse to remove the amount and I'm left with no choice but to pursue this legally as every Verizon representative I contact is incapable of sending me to someone at Verizon with the authority to handle this.

Meanwhile, they hold off reporting for a year at a time, then report active current missed payments that drops my score by 100 points every time. I've needed major dental implant work done and cant get financed, I've need to switch devices and can't do anything myself because my 'subbed account' is a 'sub of the top-level' account and the web site, its services, and any apps work strictly with top-level accounts (seriously developers - you can't figure out context-based users/accounts in 2022?? Hire me, I'll fix it for you.) At the least, build in a way to fix it (provide customer care or technical support with the tools to transition sub accounts to top-level accounts).

I'm getting very very very tired of this and if I have to pursue a legal route I'm going to ask for reparations for damages - which is silly because all I'm asking for from Verizon is to inform their House of Recovery that I owe them NOTHING, and to destroy any and all records of debt and update the credit bureaus of my pristine credit with Verizon.

There is not a judge in the world, who's going to give a win to some 1-off collections dept., nor to anybody, who will acknowledge a customer has had active - paid-up - service for 5 years on a rewritten (reinstated) contract of service; but who are being difficult over the superseded contract  and refusing to drop the debt they're clearly showing he doesn't have and has already paid....all because either A) Verizon is bulldozing customers into a position where they refuse to deal with them and as such leave House of Recovery with enough "authority" to be candid jacks..., or B) because House of Recovery decides with "arm flexing" attitudes that something doesn't make sense to them, and so instead of calling Verizon and getting confirmation they decide to say "I AM SOFA KING WE TODD DID" and refuse to remove the debt and make things right.

Please do something about this. I refuse to believe Verizon has so little appreciation for their 5 year plus customers that they can't take 5 minutes to straighten this out.

Multi Trillion dollar corporation, I pay my late fees any month with out question. Better believe I'm going to hold you accountable for every red cent!

[vzw_customer_support]

I understand your concern, and will be sending you a Private Note momentarily. *Sarah

[tjschmitt127]

Verizon did the same thing to me for an $85 balance I had no idea was outstanding, which by the way occurred because of Verizon's negligent billing after my account was closed. I thought everything was squared away on my account and then got a notification from the credit bureau that I had an outstanding balance of $85! I cannot believe this was reported before even a simple call that this was present. By the way, the reason this balance was present is because Verizon messed up the final billing, ended up processing a refund, but then asked to get the refund back when some payment issues arose (for a payment that wasn't supposed to be taken in the first place). I have called multiple times and reached out via multiple emails and have not had any assistance. My credit score dropped 100 points from this ridiculously aggressive and unfair practice by Verizon. I paid the balance immediately after getting a notification. I would like for someone to get in contact with me immediately.

[vzw_customer_support]

Hello tjschmitt127, 

I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties with the billing. It's crucial that you receive billing communications, and that your billing be correct every time. I would be happy to point you in the right direction, so this can be resolved. For help with billing concerns on your closed account, please reach out to the Recovery team at 800-852-1922. They would be happy to assist with your questions and concerns. 

-Michelle