Kara & Michael’s Blog

Where I live (suburban Maryland), Verizon and Comcast are a well-established oligopoly that people desiring phone/internet/TV service are pretty much forced to deal with. I use Comcast for all three services, and whenever I sit on hold with them for half an hour or speak to a surly in-home technician, I find myself smiling and thinking, “At least I’m not dealing with Verizon.” Here’s why.

At the end of October, K. and I decided it would be nice to get rid of our cable TV service. It’d save us some money and maybe result in us watching less TV. Since Comcast’s non-TV services are prohibitively expensive unless you also get their cable service, the logical choice was to move to Verizon phone and DSL. Thus began my descent into Verizon Hell.

I called them up to ask about service, and spoke to a friendly lady who came up with a package that was just right for us: cheap, no contracts, everything we needed and nothing we didn’t. I even asked about the absence of a contract to make sure I’d heard correctly. I put in the install order and sat back in satisfaction. Sadly, this was to be my last positive experience with Verizon.

A few days later I received an email notifying me of my impending DSL service and reminding me of the one-year contract to which I had agreed. I was surprised, but not yet discouraged. Surely this was a mistake. I called Verizon’s customer service and spoke to eight different people over the course of 45 minutes (I am, in the words of Dave Barry, not making this up) before being told that the service package I had been sold did not exist. I had agreed to a one-year contract, and they wouldn’t hear a word otherwise. I asked to speak to a supervisor, who basically told me that I should cancel if I didn’t like it. So I was transferred to someone else, “who deals with” cancellations, and I clearly requested that my phone and DSL service be canceled.

That was three days after I signed up. I had Verizon phone service for a little more than 48 hours. The DSL service was never even activated. But that didn’t keep them from sending me a bill for over $90 in activation charges and monthly service charges for phone and DSL. When I called again, I was told that although I had canceled after two days, I had to pay for at least a month of phone service. I spoke to several people and then a billing supervisor, who finally grasped that Verizon had committed some light fraud and dissolved the phone charges. At the end of our conversation, she found out that the plan I had been sold and subsequently told was nonexistent did, in fact, exist. Whoops.

I also found out that I had apparently never asked to cancel my DSL service. Bull. I asked again for it to be canceled — at least I was still within the 30-day trial period. Of course, this necessitated talking to someone else: the seventh person I spoke to on that day.

I won’t bore you with further details, but suffice it to say that as of January I am still in Verizon Hell. The last two months I have been billed three times for seemingly random amounts — $50.61; $28.38; some other number I don’t remember. When I call to ask about the latest random bill, I’m told by someone in India, who probably has little connection to Verizon, that there’s a credit pending and I should receive a revised bill. Sure enough, a revised bill does eventually come — a month later, and only a few days before the due date of the previous bill. Hey Verizon: Why are you sending me bills that you don’t intend for me to pay? It’s not like I’ve made any changes to my service since, say, the end of October.

I planned on listing the things that are wrong with the way Verizon does business, but I don’t know where to start. Residential phone service and DSL are completely separate — you can’t even ask about your bill without talking to at least two people. DSL billing support is in India and pretty much has no access to your bill. The phone staff I have spoken to (at my most recent count, 26 people) have been either extremely friendly and helpful or surly and incompetent, usually the latter. There appears to be no middle ground.

I had service with Verizon Wireless and found them to be stunningly incompetent. Unfortunately their residential phone/DSL service appears to be of similar quality. I have never experienced a billing nightmare of this magnitude with any company. I have never heard of a company that waits a month to send revised invoices when a billing error is discovered or a credit is issued. And I have spoken to only a handful of companies that have telephone support staff so oblivious and narrowly trained. I have spoken to 26 people at Verizon and found not one who could actually help with my problem. I have had to manage my own resolution, parceling out bits of the problem to people that “deal with” those bits. No company should put their customers in such a position. What if I less argumentative? What if I was 80 years old and unwilling to spend the hours on the phone that I have? Or if I had a shaky memory? I would’ve just paid that bill for $50.61, and I’ll bet you there wouldn’t have been a “revised bill” or a refund check.

I’ll stop now since I’m starting to rant. It just stuns me, every time I call Verizon, how little of a clue anyone I speak to seems to have. It’s not their fault, either: it points to poor training and terrible corporate management.

Needless to say, I will not be doing business with Verizon again, in any capacity. I would encourage anyone who isn’t willing to deal with the fallout from Verizon’s shoddy business practices to do the same.

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