I need help. My 83 year old mother has a Verizon cell phone. In October, for a period of two days, I could not reach her on her cell. I kept getting a recording in Spanish. She went to the kiosk in the mall where she got her phone and they fixed it. Her November bill arrived and it was $8,700 dollars. She just chuckled and said she couldn’t imagine having any trouble getting that fixed. She went back to the mall and the guy “did some computer stuff” and said it was taken care of. She paid her normal monthly rate. Her December bill arrived and it was close to $9,000 with penalties added. She went back to the kiosk, who now told her they couldn’t fix that kind of thing and sent her to the Verizon store. She met with a nice young man who assured her he had taken care of it. If she had any more trouble she was to come back and ask for him. The January bill has not arrived but while she was sick with the flu she started getting phone calls from Verizon wanting to know when she would be paying her bill. She was well enough today to go back to the Verizon store but no one there had ever heard of the name of the guy she talked to the first time. She told her story to another nice young man, who looked it up and said it was tagged as fraud. He called in another person but neither of them were authorized to do anything. They were to call her back later. They did call back, but only to say that they could not reach the person they needed to speak to. Meanwhile, her phone will not make calls. She can receive them but they time out after a certain period of time (like 7 min) and the caller has to call back.
I am not happy. She walks several miles every day where there are black bears. I like to think she could call if she needed help on a walk or when she is driving herself to one of her volunteer gigs. She is out and about too much to be without a working cell phone. Who can she call? What can be done?
She can get a TMobile phone at Walmart or similar for $50 or less and pay $100 for 1000 minutes for the phone that will last up to a year by buying a $100 phone card. She can just cancel Verizon.
She can also contact her local news station, elected officials, Better Business Bureau and Consumer protection and complain about how she’s being treated by Verizon.
I think someone needs to contact local consumer advocate, but also send a statement to verizon that they must sign for to recieve, that details what has been done on her acct to this point.
Also, get a printout and the reps name whenever you have anything done.
Verizon had by far the best coverage in our area, but if there is service equally as good in hers, then perhaps it might be a consideration to get a prepaid phone.
Have you gotten her authorization to speak to Verizon about her account? I’m sure you will be much better at communicating the problem and how you would like it resolved. If you are nearby you should go in with her. If not, just have her authorize you by having her call Verizon, they can add you as an authorized account person and ask for a password for when you call. OR, just ask her if it’s ok to call and talk as though you ARE her. All you usually need to know is the last 4 of her social. My mom and I do that all the time when dealing with our shared account. I’m sure you can get it straightened out.
he problem probably has more to do with the “kiosk” operator than Verizon. Kiosks are not usually corporate stores, but rather “premium retailers” which are 3rd party, not Verizon Corporation. I wouldn’t count on any kiosk to straigthen it out (unless they ARE a corporate owned one)
If anyone wants to get my blood boiling, just say: " Verizon Wireless". I had horrific luck dealing with them when I had service with them and had problems; I eventually dropped them like a flaming red hot stinking potato. I actually had better service with Verizon when I went to a Verizon ‘premium retailer’ instead of company stores…I think the dealer owned stores treated me better because they had “skin” in business. The company Verizon stores are useless getting any problems resolved because all they seem to care about is selling new business and they don’t even care to help existing customers because the Verizon reps deep down know Verizon sucks. Good luck talking to Verizon reps on phone…they’ll run you around on an endless merry-go-round of not helping you and passing you on to take-over reps who are as useless as everyone else at Verizon…everyone I used to talk to at Verizon would give me a different answer.
I don’t recommend to anyone, including my worst enemies, Verizon Wireless for cell phone service!
We have recently upgraded our family plan phones and since we did so in July we have had continuing issues with billing from Verizon. The people in the Verizon store will be absolutely useless in deaing with them. You will need to deal with verizon.com Customer Service. I found the most effective way rather than pressing a zillion buttons when you call the 800# is to have an online chat and then you can be directed to a different # than the one on the website to resolve this issue.
Actually I was surprised to have this ongoing issue as when we initially switched from ATT we had no problems with Verizon and I also had billing issues with ATT however at least with ATT you could easily get through their 800#.