My Verizon Story

Verizon SCREWS people with disabilities

This site contains the text of an email that I sent to Susan Hogan, a consumer advocate in Rhode Island, she has a spot on the 6 pm news on WPRI, 12 in Providence.

I sent both Verizon and Terry Upton a copy of this email. Nether Verizon or Mr. Upton has bothered to respond. Wouldn't that be the professional thing to do? Of course it would but as you will see when you read the email I sent for the most part Verizon staff seems unable to behave in a professional manner.

If you would like to comment on the sloppy service please call Verizon 1-800-895-8044

or call
Terry Upton
Sup-Network Operations
Fiber Solutions Center
401-525-2128 Desk
401-578-5642 Cell
401-277-4460 Fax
terry.l.upton@verizon.com

Use this Email to email Veizon directly it will by-pass the screening of the emails that they make public vze5ct25@verizon.net

In Addition to contacting the local TV station, I contacted the BBB. Verizon has until April tenth to respond. As you can imagine they are dragging their feet, are we surprised, hell no. so It would be a great help if you contacted the person we are waiting on :

Ms. Sharon Stewart

ADDRESS: 540 Broad Street Floor 17 Newark, NJ 07102

PHONE: 800 483-7988

FAX: 973 482-0890

I never cease to be amazed at the lies I am told by Verizion. If you will recall, I was told by the person at the Warwick Tech Support center that my account was brought up to date and I owed NOTHING! Well that was a LIE. Latter I fond out I did owe, but was assured I could work out a payment plan with Verizon and that someone would call me to set up a payment plan that would work for both me and the company, this again was a lie, I got a call the next day, and was told that $125 was due that day April 3, 2008. I reminded the person on the other end of the phone that we would have never gotten into the situation if Verizon had followed through with the agreed to in the first place. I did all I could to make payments available to the company, it is like owing some one money and when they come to you house you tell them the money you owe them is on the table, and they should take it. They acknowledge this and don’t take it. You make several calls telling them they left the money on the table and they should take it, they say they will and never do, whose fault is it that they don’t get paid?

I asked to set up a payment plant thinking I could pay the monthly bill and a little more until the over due amount was paid off, this shows I am not trying to get out of paying as I have been accused of. They refused this offer saying that the full amount was due immediately; I explained that I would not have that amount till the 16^th they said they would only give me till the tenth. If the full amount was not paid by the tenth I would be disconnected again and would not have service restored, until the bill was paid and eventually my service would be canceled altogether. I asked if that happened If I would be held responsible for the early termination fee, since I was not the one initializing the cancellation, they were. They said I would be charged the fee, despite the fact I would was not seeking to be released from the contract. Does this seem unfair and unethical to you?

Ms. Hogan,

I wrote to of this matter before, and you were kind enough to send me a post card asking me to call you to follow up on this matter. I chose not to call you back, because I mistakenly believed that Verizon had resolved that matter, and I did not think it was worth wasting your time or mine to deal with a problem that was taken care of. Well I was wrong and I find myself in the same situation once again, again due to the incompetence, poor customer service, and down right dishonesty of Verizon FIOS.

As I told you last time I wrote you due to the fact that I have Cerebral Palsy, a neurological disorder that affects fine and gross motor functions I cannot write, checks out to pay bills. Therefore it is imperative that I set up automatic bill pay, so I can keep my utilities running uninterrupted. I will not rehash all the details of my first email to you; rather I will cut and paste it below this correspondence for your reference. Let me up date you on what “actions” Verizon has taken (or claimed to take) and my situation as of today, Monday, March 24, 2008.

After Verizon realized I contacted you and were hoping to have your television station assist me with this issue, on your consumer advocacy segment “Call 12 for Action” on the 6 pm WPRI newscast. They jumped to remedy my situation; soon I was called by a Rhode Island Verizon representative Mr. Terry Upton, he was very helpful. After putting me in touch with Verizon tech support, where they took my routing number and told me that they arranged the direct withdrawal, everything seemed fine, key work there is SEEMED.

Come to find out the incompetence of the Verizon staff is shining through once again. I use Verizon for my internet and television, I don’t have a land line I use Verizon cell phone for as my sole phone service. It seems as if they only made withdrawals from my checking to cover the internet fees, not the cost on the television bill.” I did not notice this since so many “adjustments” were made to my bill to compensate me for their first blunder Verizon made, when I checked to see if monies were being withdrawn the smaller dollar amount seemed reasonable. I now know I should have check the amount latter on, I will own this mistake, however, the company made no effort to contact me, to let me know about the billing problem. Soon my service was discontinued again, due to their not following through with our agreement.

At this point I called Mr. Upton and left numerous voice mails all which have gone unacknowledged. Unfortunately my computer crashed and needs to be replaced, I was unable to email him, until I got to a friends computer today, and I plan to cc this email to him.

Since I could not get to Mr. Upton, I called Verizon FIOS 1-800-895-8044 . I was unable to get though since it was after hours and the customer support service was closed for the evening, this was on March 18^th the day my service was disconnected, not knowing what else to do I called 611 on my cell phone, I spoke with Kiki and she told she would call me the next day. She called me on the 19^th after customer service had me closed to call FIOS back the next day. There was nothing more she could do.

I called on the 21st and got a huge shock, as I said before I thought the dollar amount being taken out of my checking account covered both TV and internet since that was what I was told on the phone by the person Mr. Upton put me in touch with, turns out I was wrong, they only took out the internet. This left a balance of about $266 unpaid, with an over due amount of about $172, which had to be paid in full before my service could be reinstated. I explained that I would be more then happy to pay the over due amount how ever I wanted it to be understood that this debt would have never accumulated if they had followed through with our agreement in the first place, it was their sloppy work that created this unnecessary stress in the first place. I was told that I would have to pay the full over due amount $172 or my television would remain disconnected until it was paid.

I went on to give further information about my situation. I let the operator know the history I have had with Verizon since August 2007 to today, I also shared with them that I am a substitute teacher and I only get paid for the days I go in. recently I had a bout with pneumonia from which I am still recovering. This caused me to lose two weeks pay. So I simply do not have $172 to give them, keeping in mind that I would not owe it to them in the first place if they kept their word and followed through with what we agreed upon.

He also told me that I had until March 29 to make the payment or my contract would be canceled all together, I asked him if this happened if I would still be responsible for the early termination fee since THEY were disconnecting me and I was not seeking them out to discontinue my service. He did not know. In my opinion this would be a good thing since I would be able to go back to COX communications at this point, when I was with them they had no problems providing me with direct withdrawal and they had 24 hr customer service, something Verizon lacks, witch might be a good thing because 24 hours of customer service that is grossly incompetent is no better then getting nothing on the other end of the line.

Finally he adjusted the amount due to $97. I thanked them for this and told them that I did not have even that at the moment. I told the man from billing that I would be glad to give them $50 that day and the other $47 April 1. He agreed to this and said that the $50 would be enough to get the service started again since I was making a “good faith effort”. He told me that he was going to forward me to a person that would take payment over the phone, I was to tell them of my $50 agreement and I would be all set, the TV would be back by the end of the day. I told the man I was sent to about the $50 arrangement he refused to honor it, he also refused to speak with the person I spoke to, to verify my story.

This shows the true nature of the Verizon organization, they are unorganized, give poor customer service, and are out right liars. Can you help me get my service back on with the assurance that the money for both cable and internet will be deducted from my account in a timely fashion? To be honest I would rather go to COX.

In addition to sending this to you I also plan on sending this email to various disability advocacy groups, I believe my civil rights have been violated, since the ability to make payments on my bill has been mad in accessible to me this is a clear violation of the ADA. Finally I will post my all the emails I have sent on my Verizon web space making this a mater of public record. I will also create duplicate site on Google Pages

Paul Auger

If you would like to comment on the sloppy service please call Verizon 1-800-895-8044

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