Verizon Rep Deliberately Lies to Me, Costing Me $1,071, And I Will Make a Report to the BPU and FCC

[Magg901]

Verizon Rep Deliberately Lies to Me, Costing Me $1,071, And I Will Make a Report to the BPU and FCC

Verizon, apparently, has their phones answered either by (1) Blatant liars, or (2) People so incompetent that there is virtually 0% chance that the answer they give is correct.  

THIS IS NOT A JOKE.  I am deadly serious and it indicates a serious problem that I will have to report to the regulators.  I will next be contacting the BPU and the FCC because it indicates a calculated strategy to trick customers into overpaying.  

Keep reading to see the incredible level of either incompetence or deceitful activity from Verizon.  You won't believe this--I didn't believe it myself.

Verizon itself should listen to the recordings of all the calls I made and determine what is happening.  I give the date and times of my calls so that Verizon can track the calls.  I encourage Verizon to listen to the calls and for someone within Verizon to determine if the answers I got are correct.  I also encourage Verizon to contact me, but I doubt they will.

I have called Verizon and asked a question, gotten an answer, then called right back and asked the same question.  Every single time, every single time (did you hear me say EVERY SINGLE TIME?) I have gotten what seems to be THE WRONG ANSWER!  They are DIFFERENT answers, but I think they are all wrong.  It would cost me money if I relied on their incompetent/deceitful answers, but I guess Verizon doesn't care and WELCOMES THE OPPORTUNITY to gouge money based on the lies their representatives tell me.  

I spoke to SEVEN--did you notice I said SEVEN--separate people at Verizon and ALL OF THEM told me the WRONG INFORMATION, from what I can tell.  Every single one of them!

If SEVEN people tell me the wrong information, is it incompetence or is it a planned and calculated strategy to lie to customers to get more money?  Maybe the FCC can figure it out.  I can supply them with recordings of all the calls.

I have Verizon Local Package, according to my bill, and I have had it for twenty years.  I know what the package covers.  It allows "local" calling, but there is a charge for "regional toll calls" and "long distance".  That's pretty much the way landline phones have worked for the past 100 years and anyone who has had a landline phone knows this.  

The problem is that EVEN VERIZON DOES NOT KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS or pretends not to understand in order to deceive customers.

Of course, the billing computer knows, but you cannot TALK to the computer that calculates your bill.  The people answering the phones will simply lie to you, but you are subject to the computer!  Once the computer charges you, God help you if you try to get the money back!

I found that there is NOWHERE on the site that tells me where I can call with no extra charge.  Nowhere!   So, reasonably, I called Verizon and asked the simple question: "Where can I call without incurring an extra charge?"  Answering that question seems to be AN INSURMOUNTABLE problem for Verizon!  You would think that I had asked the rep for the steps to perform a coronary artery bypass graft, which I can assure you is a complicated procedure.  If Verizon cannot answer a question about phone charges then who can?  Certainly a heart surgeon can't.

They would rather I just make calls and rack up charges than TELL ME what calls will not cost money.  I am assuming this is a deliberate plan to trick customers into making calls that will cost big money.  If not, then what is it?

On Jan 05, 2018 at about 9PM I called the number on my bill and spoke to a woman with (maybe) a Chinese accent SO HEAVY that I could hardly follow what she was saying and had to ask her MANY TIMES to repeat what she was saying.  I asked her the question and she said, "Oh, you can call anywhere in the United States because you have the Verizon Freedom Essentials, which lets you call throughout the United States and Canada for no extra charge."

I said to her, "Well that can't be right, since I know it says on my bill I have Verizon Local Package."  Can you believe that this woman is so incompetent that she can't even get the package I have correct?  After another 6 minutes on hold she came back and said, "Yes, you do have the Verizon Local Package, but you can change to the Verizon Freedom Essentials for $65.99 a month."  Meanwhile, I was signed-in to my account on the PC and saw on the Verizon site that the Verizon Freedom Essentials says $60.99 a month for me.  So she told me the wrong price.  Did I expect a Verizon employee to be minimally competent?  Silly me.

She said, "With the package you have now you can still call ANYWHERE in NJ with no extra charge."  That absolutely cannot be correct.  This woman seems to be completely unaware of the concept of Regional and Local calling areas!  I have lived in this area for quite a while and I have a rough idea of what towns are in my calling area.  Throughout the call, I noted, the woman seemed to be very confused and whenever I would ask her an additional question about what she was saying, there was a lonnnnng pause and she spoke in a very tentative manner, indicating that she probably was not sure of what she was saying.  It's already been established that this person CANNOT EVEN properly identify the calling plan I have, so why should I believe what she is telling me?

It says right on the Verizon site, "To get the most accurate information about your regional toll calling area, refer to the Consumer Guide section in your local Verizon phone directory, or contact Verizon for more information."

That's what I'm doing, contacting Verizon!  No one I get seems to even UNDERSTAND these concepts!  What kind of people are they hiring?  Are they teaching them anything? No.  I asked one rep if she knew what "InterLATA" meant.  She had no idea.  Remember that this is a PHONE COMPANY where the employees seem to know less than I do about phones.

I hung up with her and called back at 10:46 PM and spoke to another woman with (perhaps) a Chinese accent so heavy that I had to ask her several times to slow down and repeat her words.  I asked the same question and got the same answer: I can call anywhere in the state for no extra charge.  That is certainly wrong since I have, in the past, accidentally called a number in the next county and even in the SAME county and received a charge on my bill!

I made another call and asked the same question, but the call cut off before she could answer.  She called me back at 11:04PM  and this heavily-accented woman told me I can call within the state for no charge.  Is that correct? Again, No.

I hung up and called again at 11:09PM.  This rep came up with a NEW lie/wrong answer to tell me.  She told me that I can call ONLY within my own town for no charge! That is clearly the wrong answer, since, for the past 35 years, I know that I have been able to call any number of neighboring towns and not incur any charge. That's what's known as a local calling area.  I call the three or four towns near me and never have a charge.  So this one has no idea what the right answer is, or deliberately lied to me.

I called again at 11:19 PM and asked.  She put me on hold, this is not a joke, until 11:37 PM.  That's EIGHTEEN MINUTES of waiting just for this simple question. She said any calls within the same area code are free.  I said that can't be right since the area code covers a big area and covers more than one county.  I gave her the number of a restaurant in the next county and asked her if I could call it for no charge.  Again, she put me on hold and came back after nearly 20 minutes!  She said that, yes, I can call that number with no charge.  I doubt that is true since calls outside my county have always incurred a charge.  She further told me that I could call it today and then she would call me back the next day to tell me if the call had incurred a charge and that she would REFUND the charge if it had cost anything.  

A year ago when Verizon forced me to have a technician switch my line from copper to fiber, they told me that my monthly charges would be the same.  You can guess what happened: The next day ALL MY CALLING FEATURES disappeared! Call Forwarding and the rest, all gone!  I called to get them restored and then what happened?  My next phone bill was TWENTY DOLLARS higher!  Did I expect Verizon NOT to lie to me?  Silly me.

Based on the constant lying that Verizon has directed my way, I am guessing she will NOT call back.  Then, I will be faced with arguing with a rep on the phone, after my next phone bill arrives, to get the charge for the call to the next county removed.  I am guessing that the rep I speak to at that time will KNOW NOTHING of the discussion I had with the woman with the heavy Chinese accent who promised me she would refund the charge. Would I expect anything different?

Isn't it great to be a customer of, or, really, a victim of, Verizon?

[jonjones1]

I am not going to quote that long tirade. 

Simple fact of the matter is you could just have researched the plan prior to agreeing to it. Today you can get a VoIP plan from many companies for a Magic Jack at $45 for the device with 6 months free service with calling at all of the USA and Canada. http://www.magicjack.com in fact the five year plan is about $105 complete and the doggle they sell you can plug into your internet router or any computer with USB connection.

i also use a VoIP service from http://www.voipo.com which has a ton of services but cost about $95 a year and the interface they send you hooks into your router and the interface belongs to them. So there is two better choices right there and cheaper.

So I would also point out cellular service today is such that long distance to the USA and Canada is included. Some even have it to Puerto Rico and Mexico 

so stop complaining and just find a service that will work for you.

[LawrenceC]

Hi Magg901,

Your issue has been escalated to a Verizon agent. Before the agent can begin assisting you, they will need to collect further information from you. Please go to your profile page for the forum and scroll down the page to an area titled "My Support Cases". You can reach your profile page by clicking on your name located above your post, or at the top right of this page.

Under "My Support Cases" you will find a link to the private board where you and the agent may exchange information. The title of your post is the link. This should be checked on a frequent basis, as the agent may be waiting for information from you before they can proceed with any actions. To ensure you know when they have responded to you, you may subscribe to the case. At the top right of your support case there is a gear icon which provides a drop down menu with support case options. Click that and choose "subscribe". Please keep all correspondence regarding your issue in the private support portal.

[Magg901]

Follow-Up to Verizon Rep Deliberately Lies to Me

This is a follow-up to my posting about Verizon continually giving me incorrect and misleading information about my phone service while insisting that the information is, indeed, correct.  It is a funny (and frustrating) story, but it speaks to the state of Verizon's landline customer service.  

This is the 2nd and last posting I will make on this topic because there is apparently no solution to the fact that (by Verizon's own admission--see below) their employees don't understand their own phone plans and don't understand basic phone-service terms such as "interLATA" or "intraLATA" or "regional" or "local".  I am guessing that it's cheaper than properly training employees to just tell customers the wrong information and then argue with them a month later about hundreds of dollars of toll charges on the bill when the customer relies on the wrong information (see the monetary calculation below).

Let this stand as a warning to you.  You can call Verizon EIGHT separate times and still NEVER get the right answer.  I have the proof and, now, you do, too.

You can see my original posting at https://forums.verizon.com/t5/Home-Phone/Verizon-Rep-Deliberately-Lies-to-Me-Costing-Me-1-071-And-I-...

Please ignore the reply to that posting by "jonjones" because it is irrelevant and off-topic.

I have since communicated with someone who says he/she is a Verizon representative (in the private section).  That person admits that everything the seven representatives said is wrong; however, even that alleged employee didn't offer me the answer to my question.  

His/her solution is for me to order a paper phone book.  That is their 21st century solution.  I agree that the book would contain the information, since I recall reading phone books in the 1980's and 1990's that had information on this topic on ONE page in the front of the book.  So, I have to order a 200-page paper book just so I can read one page.  I have not seen a paper phone book in probably a decade since they stopped delivering them to my house long ago.  I have no idea how many weeks it would take to get that book.  Furthermore, since I presently have 16 inches of snow on my driveway (I measured) and the temperature is 4 deg Fahrenheit and the wind chill is minus 9, I don't know if the book would even be visible as it sinks into the snow or blows away or if it would avoid getting chopped up when I run the snowblower.

The interesting thing is that no customer can even put in an order for a paper phone book on the Verizon website.  It requires a phone call ONLY between the hours of 8 AM and 4:45 PM.  Verizon is REALLY part of the 21st century, isn't it?  

My complaint, which is valid, is that Verizon refuses to place this information on the website (where anyone could get to it in seconds and resolve their questions within a minute) and then gives me the wrong information EIGHT times in a row.  

Oh, you didn't know it is now eight (and not the 7 from my previous posting)?  

This evening, Jan 06, 2018, at 10:19 PM EST, I placed another call to Verizon and spoke with "Carl", who informed me that my plan includes 1000 minutes of calling across the United States, with a 5-cent-per-minute charge for each minute over that.  Can you believe that?  Of course, that is incorrect.

I wonder if I can get to 500 wrong answers in a row if I keep calling.  I won't bother calling to ask them that question anymore, since it's lost its humor.  It's now just pathetic. I calculated that, if I were to rely on what "Carl" told me today, it would add a minimum of $690.63, including my sales tax, to my next phone bill!  That's pretty dramatic, isn't it? Improperly training employees costs Verizon nothing, but would cost me quite a lot.

You may be interested to know that, almost eight years ago, another customer discovered the same thing I discovered and also came to the conclusion that Verizon does this deliberately to get more money from customers.  

A customer named "konabish" on the Verizon Forum wrote a posting https://forums.verizon.com/t5/Home-Phone/ANOTHER-Step-BACKWARDS-NO-You-CANNOT-SEE-Your-LOCAL-Calling...

[jonjones1]

Please ignore the reply to that posting by "jonjones" because it is irrelevant and off-topic”

I am not going to quote that long tirade.
Simple fact of the matter is you could just have researched the plan prior to agreeing to it. Today you can get a VoIP plan from many companies for a Magic Jack at $45 for the device with 6 months free service with calling at all of the USA and Canada. http://www.magicjack.com in fact the five year plan is about $105 complete and the doggle they sell you can plug into your internet router or any computer with USB connection.

i also use a VoIP service from http://www.voipo.com which has a ton of services but cost about $95 a year and the interface they send you hooks into your router and the interface belongs to them. So there is two better choices right there and cheaper.
So I would also point out cellular service today is such that long distance to the USA and Canada is included. Some even have it to Puerto Rico and Mexico
so stop complaining and just find a service that will work for you.

You mean the reply that was relevant on your post that I said above?

it is still relevant and why you would come to a customer helping customer forum to just complain made no sense.