Verizon won't let me cancel disconnection. Loyal customer done in by one of their telemarketers.

[shine474]

I have been a happy, loyal Verizon FiOS customer for several years.  Roughly 2 months ago a Verizon telemarketer called my house and my wife answered the phone. (*We did not call them.)  This representative told my wife that he reviewed our account and found a way to save us money by changing our voice plan.  My wife innocently approved of a change to the voice plan if it meant savings.  She also agreed to have Showtime added due to a half price promotion that the rep told her about.  We were shocked when the next bill arrived and our monthly cost had gone up by roughly $40 instead of down.  My wife called to complain, but  the next month, the bill was still up roughly $30.

At this point I asked my wife to let me handle it as I had been managing the account up until that fatefull call.  I called Verizon and requested simply that they change my services back to what they were before the meddling telemarketer tricked my wife.  The representative told me that she could not do this as I had been in plans that I was grandfathered into and these plans were no longer available.  Great!  I had plans that I was very happy with and even if I didn't love the price, I was willing to pay it, but now I couldn't go back.

Then things got strange.  I asked how my wife was able to authorize changes in the first place as she is not named on the account.  She doesn't even share my last name.  The real kicker is that they couldn't tell me my wife's name.  So how do they even know they were speaking to my wife.  The representative accused me of speaking "legalese" and said that she could not discuss that with me.  I got fed up and told her that if this is how Verizon was going to treat a customer who simply wants to keep being a happy customer, she could just go ahead and schedule me for disconnection.  Without even asking if she could do anything to change my mind she put me on hold and scheduled the disconnection.

Tonight I called and told a different, much more professional and compassionate representative my story.  She agreed that the whole situation was ridiculous and tried everything in her power to get the computer system to let me have my old plan back.  Working with her supervisor and the Disconnect team, she tried in vain to simply put things right.  In the end, not only could they not fix my services - they couldn't even cancel my disconnection.  They told me that there is now no way to cancel the disconnection!!!! Even if I want to stay a Verizon customer, I cannot.

Much to my disappointment, I have already scheduled a Cablevision install for early next week.  While Cablevision has offered me a great package to return to them ($115/month for the IO Silver package, and thrown in a free Kindle Fire to boot), I would cancel the install and stay with Verizon in a heartbeat if they could help make this situation right.

What is going on there?  If anyone at Verizon with any authority to do something about this is reading this message, please contact me.  You know who I am by my screen name.