My husband and I lived in Virginia for 2 years. During that time, we had phone service (regular, NOT cell) through Verizon. We had a ton of problems with the company right from the start. The first, was that our phone service didn’t work for the first month we paid for it. We went back and forth with the company, they kept insisting it was our apartment complex’s fault, and our apartment complex kept checking everything, and stating that it was Verizon’s fault. I finally broke down and cried on the phone during my 4th call to the service rep. I insisted they fix the problem, as our apartment maintenance guys had tried everything on our end that they possibly could. Verizon’s response was that they COULD send someone out, but if the problem ended up not being their fault, they would have to charge us for the visit. I agreed, though I was very concerned that the problem would never be fixed. They sent a rep out, and sure enough, it was Verizon’s problem. In the interim, we tried to switch to digital phone through another company, but our apartment complex wouldn’t allow it.
Eventually, our phone service problems were resolved, though Verizon offered us NO compensation for our trouble, and still charged us for the month that our phone service wasn’t working. Tired of fighting with them, I just gave up and paid our bill. We left Virginia in September of 2007, and cancelled our phone service with Verizon 2 months before leaving, as we didn’t see much use for a landline at that point. (We both have cell phones). Since we had our phone bill automatically deducted from our bank account, and we hadn’t heard from the company in 2 months, we assumed when we moved out that everything was settled.
Verizon strikes again. A month ago (this is now a full YEAR after we canceled our phone service) we recieved a collections notice from a company claiming we owed about $20 on our Verizon bill. Looking it up on the internet, we saw that there was a popular mail scam where fraudulent notices had been sent out supposedly from that company on behalf of Verizon. Since we had our bill automatically taken out from the bank account, and hadn’t had that phone service in a year, we were going to ignore it, assuming it was a scam. Well, after some discussion, we decided instead to contact the company, just in case it was legitimate, as we are going to be getting a mortgage loan soon, and we didn’t want this on our credit. We tried to log into our online account, but found that since we no longer had a phone number with Verizon, it wouldn’t let us access it. So, my husband called the company. Apparently, Verizon didn’t automatically deduct our final bill. Instead of notifying us of this fact, they just turned the matter over to a collections agency and sent them after us. I am SO ANGRY about this. This is the worst customer service I’ve ever heard of, and I will be EXTREMELY upset if it damages our credit score.
Lessons learned from this: 1) Always call and verify that your final utility bills have been paid before moving, even if you have them auto-deducted from your bank account. 2) If your phone company has poor customer service from the start, let that be an early warning sign of future problems.
