Oscar Trelles

Verizon DSL: Customer Service that really sucks.

I’m sorry if you had to read some offending comments on my last post, but if I haven’t been able to monitor my blog since yesterday, Verizon is to blame. Without any justification, they have disconnected my DSL service at home, and Isabel just had made things worse…

Since the beginning of my subscription, my charges for DSL service have always appeared in my phone bill and got paid altogether directly from my checking account. Now, I always have had enough money on that account to cover my monthly bills, so how come they claim I have unpaid charges with them?

Last week, and without any prior communication, I received a “Final Notification” from Verizon Online Services telling me that since I failed to answer their previous billing attempts (none), they will be ‘forced’ to cancel my account if they didn’t receive payment by September 22nd. We immediately call them, and they explained that even though Verizon accepts direct payments, Verizon Online only takes credit cards and checks, and that’s why they were unable to collect. So, why did they put everything together in the first place? that’s not my problem at all. To avoid any more complications, I wrote and sent a check with the balance they claim, even though we are yet to receive the refund they promised.

Yesterday morning, when leaving home, I realized I had no DSL connection… ok, that has happened before, so I just went to work. But when I got back, I still didn’t have service. When contacting Verizon Online technical support, they found out it was due to a ‘billing issue’. I was transfered to a billing representative, already knowing what this was about… wait a minute, we are on September 18th, it’s not even 22nd! Ok, as expected, the account had been canceled. To make things even worse for Verizon, I called my bank and they informed me that the check I sent was cashed on the 16th!

Today I tried to contact them again, but ut turns out that ‘Billing’ is located in Virginia and the call center has been evacuated because of Isabel.

So, in short, Verizon Online is making me lose a lot of time and money by disconnecting my service for at least 3 days, without any justification. My work depends heavily on my Internet service. I just wonder if they will ever make it up to us in a reasonable way. At least the guys at Domino’s give us free pizza when they screw up…