Verizon Sucks. No, They Are Evil.

Last week I received a bill from Verizon which I assumed to be a final bill after discontinuing what was, especially the last year, truly horrible DSL service. I finally opened it at the end of last week and found that it was a bill for internet service. For this month. And to add insult to injury, the bill was $5.00 more than I had ever paid for internet service, which had been slowly increased without notice for over two years.

Still thinking it was a clerical error, I called Verizon earlier this week. After going through their maddening set of phone prompts, I finally connected with someone who I thought worked in billing. After explaining the situation, I was told that I wasn't even speaking to someone in the DSL/ Internet "department" but she would connect me. Click. Again, I explain the situation, at which point this person looks up my account.

According to her, I did not, in fact, call Verizon in early September and discontinue my service. Verizon discontinued my service in late September because I was delinquent in payments. According to their records.

The truth is I spoke with a total of four different people the day I canceled my service. And every single time I used the words "cancel my service" or "disconnect my service" with each one of them. The first three claimed that in order to do that I would have to be shunted to a different department. Again. And Again. But I hung in there and finally spoke to someone who could flip that switch for me. As I mentioned before, she inexplicably tried to sell me on Fios, even though my building isn't wired for it. But we very clearly had a conversation where there was no possible way anyone would misconstrue that I was discontinuing my status as a Verizon DSL customer.

So this notation and allegation that I was disconnected by them is an outright lie. Aside from the fact that I have not been delinquent in payments to Verizon in years, even if I had missed it, it would have been one payment. And it would have been less than a month overdue. Everyone knows damn well that wouldn't be enough to have your service even interrupted, let alone disconnected.

I suspect that what actually happened is that Verizon, or a department at Verizon, is trying to cover up the fact that there are (more than likely) other people like me who are dissatisfied with the quality of the DSL service, as well as the infuriating customer service, and are leaving Verizon in rather large numbers. I'm quite sure that every termination in service initiated by the customer, is sent somewhere along the bloated chain of bureaucracy to a department that reviews them and makes a report. Too many terminations will eventually cause some data-checking monkey to throw down his banana and sound an alarm. And nobody wants to answer to an angry monkey, so best not let the customer terminate the account. Let's just say we terminated him and send out a bill. I'm further assuming they hoped I would pay it and move on. Some people surely do.

Instead I called them on it. At which point I was shunted from department to department. I was disconnected and booted from the system twice after speaking to live operators. I just kept calling. It took almost two hours. And I was decidedly not nice. But I've been really working hard the last couple of years to stay on top of my bills, get caught up on all my out of control credit spending, pay down my debts. And I've been really proud of how well I've done. So it was doubly insulting to have them accuse me of not paying my bill. And I'm wondering if that kind of thing gets reported to the credit bureaus, since I've also been trying to repair my poor beaten down FICO score.

Aside from the fact that the reason I terminated the service is because, for the most part, my DSL service was largely a nightmare, the only thing worse than Verizon internet service is Verizon customer service.

As I've said many times. Verizon sucks.