Sleazy Verizon Blind Upsell

Last October, I was juggling three separate Verizon accounts, two landlines and a wireless account for my business phones. Several different attempts to get on Verizon's OneBill program fell short of success in 2010. In addition I'd had placed dozens of calls to complain about my spotty DSL service. It seemed every time it rained, my Net would go down. Perhaps this is why.

Living history--state of the art Verizon junction box

This rat's nest of a junction box is Verizon's sorry excuse for our 21st century information infrastructure. It provides the 25 homes on my side of the street in our fashionable little urban neighborhood with "high speed" DSL and landline service. I've never gotten anything close to the advertised 3Mbps, even when it doesn't rain. And when it does, several service techs always come out (the next day) and jiggle the cables or use the repair guys version of a hairdryer and it works again until the next rain. When I ask them what we can do to prevent outages again, the responses vary from contact the PUC to wait for FIOS. FIOS, hmm, there's another sandpaper rub. Back in the early 90's I was working on a post-divestiture video for Verizon employees and came across of a clip of Ivan Seidenburg promising Philadelphia "ubiquitous fiber to the curb" in 1996. Hot damn!

Do the math Ivan, 15 years have come and gone and WHERE'S THE FIBER? Eighteen blocks from the old Bell of PA HQ and we don't have it and nobody at Verizon can tell us when we will. My neighbor Grove, a purchasing director for an aerospace firm who telecommutes on Fridays, found this out the hard way. He called Verizon last year, got bounced to the typical 5 different CSRs, got disconnected twice, (I'm sorry sir this is not my department, let me transfer you, click, errrr, If you'd like to place your call, please try again). He spent an infuriating hour and a half of his life to find out what I could've told him over a leisurely glass of wine, that Verizon is writing down the costs of their investment in copper wire and is dragging their feet for the sake of the balance sheet. It's not a technology issue. It's a money issue. Grove, never one to suffer fools, voted with his feet and promptly canceled all his Verizon services and is now a happy (by comparison) Clear customer.  I feel for you buddy, but the time you wasted is chump change compared to my experiences.

Much more Sleaze after the Jump!

This is all background to the most recent Verizon outage/outrage/overage I've endured. With three bills to juggle and no luck in combining them, not sure what I was paying, my Verizon email address was canceled. Internet worked fine, as long as it didn't rain, but no me@verizon.net.  In October, after dozens of attempts to address this issue, I found a CSR who was able to enroll me in OneBill. I'd originally kept a separate phone line for fax and data, but since DSL works over voice lines and I seldom use fax anymore, the second line was redundant. So I also canceled it. I asked to have my me@verizon.net account reinstated. No problem, sir. After dozens of misdirections and a weeks worth of lost time, I figured I had lucked into the one CSR in the company who knew what the #### she was doing.

This change blew out my voicemail service on the number I'd kept, (wasn't supposed to happen) a number which I hadn't changed and only added DSL service too. Setting up Verizon's voicemail is a lowrent pain in the butt. I'd transferred from an MCI email service that gave you a unique stutter tone to tell you you had vmail, required only a two digit access code, was readily available on my computer and alerted my cellphone when people left messages in my business v-box. Verizon's Vmail requires dialing a local number, entering your phone number, (duh Verizon, your own technology can't determine which number I'm calling from) and then entering a secret code for each v-box you want to access. My wife won't use it. I don't blame her. What's more, I don't know how many times she or I'd call the 7-digit number and find it busy. Busy? Voicemail busy? Doing what? Compound it with all throughout last year and this, I started getting these cryptic bills and messages in my (non-Verizon) email account with account numbers I didn't recognize. When I'd click on the link to go to "My Verizon" (what a joke) I'd get the "sorry we can't help you at this time" page. But this is far from the worst of it.

Unbeknownst to me and completely without my permission, she or somebody else tacked the Starz Gaming Package and Verizon Online Backup onto my account. I found this out when I went to "My Verizon" found my old number still active and billing and found these additional services tacked on to my account since October. The very UNHELPFUL CSR I spoke to last week said it was "MY" responsibility to scan the bill for errors and that she wouldn't remove the charges from the entire quarter of last year. How praytell, are services I didn't order or want my responsibility? Can you hear me? I asked this unhelpful individual for an account number. I went to "My Verizon" to enter it and get my account up-to-date and guess what, the account number she gave was wrong.

About a year before he died, my father signed up for the $99 basic cable, net and phone package. A month later, the parents were hit with a bill for over $300, with scads of premium channels that had been tacked on without his consent. My brother and I went looking for information. Apparently, the $99 special only "held" if the customer went to the Verizon website and clicked on a jelly button that indicated that you really, really, really wanted the $99 special. Signing up over the phone wasn't quite good enough. If you didn't do this, the bill jumped automatically to $149 and Verizon took the liberty of tacking on every premium cable channel in their trunk of junk. Now Dad in his final days was not very savvy on the computer and maybe he missed the fine print or maybe he didn't hear or was confused about this ridiculous requirement, but maybe this is just another example of blind upselling and I have only one word for it, particularly as it has happened to me.

SLEAZE!

Try to get anything done on the phone or online and you get shunted from one dead end to another. Nobody will take responsibility for meeting all your needs. How would this work if my business practices were comparable? I'm sorry, I only write nouns, please let me transfer you to somebody in the verb department who will be happy to assist you. What? You want adjectives and punctuation too? I'm very sorry, this isn't my department, but I'll be happy to transfer you to somebody who will be happy to turf you again and again and again. 

My old Verizon email account is still suspended. A temporary email address that a senior CSR walked me though setting up can't be changed to the old address but they don't do "legacy repoints."  You know big V, keep it. Keep them both. Keep your crappy voicemail service too. I have my good old Earthlink address and an email alias that everybody knows me by anyway. I have an answering machine on my office phone. All I have to do to get my messages is press one button.

What you definitely aren't going to keep is one red cent for services I never ordered. You're going to add insult to injury by waiting "one to two" billing circles to remove the erroneous charges? The services I requested and pay for suck bad enough. What happened to your customer service ethic? Tomorrow, first thing after my morning appointments, I'm going through my last 12 bills with a fine-toothed comb. I'm deducting everything I haven't ordered from my next payment. Try to shut my service off and the PUC complaint will happen.

DO YOU HEAR ME NOW? You will!