Technician Charges
hamdsa
Enthusiast - Level 1

I called customer service on August 01, 2019 with a 'no dial tone' issue for my phone service which I tried to use for the very first time. After troubleshooting on the phone, the customer service lady told me an on-site would be required to troubleshoot it. She sent me a text to accept the onsite visit. When I noticed the $99 service charge on it, I told her I believed the issue was on the Verizon side and I did not want to pay the charges. She specifically said not to pay attention to the charge as I will be charged only after the technician confirms the problem to be on my end and with my consent to do the work required. (Note to everyone, if you ever hear this stance from any support rep. don't believe a word of it)

This morning the technician showed up, checked there was no dial tone on the phone, went outside and did some work involving the cabling on the Verizon box, taking a cable from one old Verizon box to put in the new Verizon box and tone came in.

I asked him what the issue was. He said that the original service technician had never connected the main phone line. I asked him whether there was anything for me to sign, he said no.

The next thing I receive a bill for $160 ($99 service charge, $60 internet box), mind you, there was no issue with the internet service whatsoever and whatever work he performed to correct was on the Verizon equipment and by his own admission, something that Verizon should have done in the first place.

I called the customer service again. While the original responder seemed to understand the issue, she could not help with the charges. When I tried to explain the situation to her supervisor Kevin, he flat out said no further consent is required or needed to charge the service visit, except when you open the ticket (completely opposite to what the other service representative told me on the phone explicitly) and that the charges will stay. He also claimed the work was suppsedly done on the customer line. When I asked him about the nature of the 'internal work' he said he did not have any documentation of it. I asked him to contact the field technician, he said he could not do that either. I asked him to send me in writing what he as stating and claiming for these charges, he said he could not do that either. Go figure.

Considering my current service is under contract, I consider this no less than simple extortion by Verizon and no regard for their own contractual obligations or what they tell their customers.

Needless to say, I shall be looking for another provider as soon as I get a chance and will file complaints to FCC.

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Re: Technician Charges
LawrenceC
Moderator Emeritus

Hi hamdsa,

Your issue has been escalated to a Verizon agent. Please check your Private Message Inbox for a message from Verizon_Support. You can find your Inbox by clicking on your username at the top right corner of this page. Please direct all correspondence concerning your issue to the agents who will be assisting you privately.

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Technician Charges & "User Community" farce
hamdsa
Enthusiast - Level 1

Like many of the users in this forum, I was duped by the Verizon technical agents who claimed there would be no service charge if work is only done at the Verizon equipment. Needless to say, even though it was only done at the Verizon side (they did not connect the outside phone line at the time of putting the service and simply connected it from outside), I was handed over the bill not only for the visit but also a mysterious 'internet jack' installation which never happend.

But this post is not about that. This is about the farce around how this plays in the user community. 

You encounter an issue, you report it for other users to see, one of the 'moderators' sweeps in and 'assigns' your case to a customer representative and you can no longer post any further information about your case. While you would think it's a good thing, in private, Verizon rep. will re-hash their own version of the facts, without resolving your issue and all the rest of the user community is seeing is that the case is behing 'handled' by Verizon.

As for the issue itself, it was neve resolved. If I had known Verizon is consistently doing this to many of the users, I would have video taped the entire work done by the technician and have him sign that no internal work was done. But I never expected that Verizon would blatantly lie about such things and would only have slective record of the communications that would support its own version (They were never able to explain what the internet jack charge was or had any record of their own rep. saying 'dont worry about the charges, it's just a formality' so that tech. can come in).

The sad part is that this forum is full of such complaints, but apparently Verizon is not fazed by any of it.

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