I moved into a new apartment on April 1st. Two days beforehand, I set up Verizon DSL so that it would be there as soon as possible after moving in. In setting it up, I messed up. I put in the wrong house number (124 instead of 123). I realized within a couple hours that I'd mistyped it and called Verizon to see if it could be fixed. They said it could, got the correct number, and told me that while it may delay the modem a day or two, everything would be fine. Awesome.
Except not so much. Apparently it was never changed. I found this out when UPS kept saying they tried to deliver my modem, but I never saw them or got a delivery notice. After a lot of back and forth with UPS, turns out they were delivering it to the wrong address. While I accept responsibility for the wrong address thing, I really believed it'd been fixed. So the modem goes back to Verizon because it could never been delivered (at least not to ME) and I call customer service again to have the address properly changed.
The next call informs me that they can't cancel the account because it's never been activated, but because it will never be activated (the address is for a religious center down the road, so unless they start randomly plugging in modems, it'll just sit there). This doesn't sit quite right with me, but I can see the logic in it since nothing is charged until you actually received the equipment/use the service. They tell me a new account needs to be set up in my name instead with the correct service and billing address. They can't do this over the phone since it's an online only offer (otherwise it'd cost $15 a month more), so off to the library I go to set up my service again. This is now a week after I'm supposed to have service.
Account is set up, modem arrives, service works, everything is good. I call customer service to check on things at some point during the month and they say account 1 was never activated, no bill for it, etc. Anything not activated will expire in their system after a bit, so it's all good. Until May 20, when I get an email saying I had a bill of $67.40 due. Since I had just paid the first bill for my DSL, I figured this had to be for account 1. You know, the one that I'd never be billed for. Great.
I call again and am told that of course they can cancel the account, it should have been done all along (of course!). Keep in mind this is now almost two full months after this was supposedly taken care of by Verizon. In all this time, I've never gotten ANY bills from them, not even for the good account. The only way I've been able to view my account is online, but since account 1 isn't supposed to exist, I don't have the number for it. CSR cancels account 1 and I get a cancellation email. Finally taken care of.
But no. I wake up this morning to find that $67.40 was taken off my debit card . Guess what account it's for! Because you have to give a credit card number to set up an account online, my debit card was still associated with the supposedly canceled account. Another phone call reviews that because I don't know the account number, no one in the billing or financial services department can see this account. The spend two hours bouncing me back and forth, disconnecting me, giving me wrong numbers to call, and generally being not helpful at all. The final straw is when, after explaining all the problems I'm having, the CSR tried to SELL ME FIOS. WHY YES, I'D LOVE TO BUY MORE PRODUCTS FROM YOUR C
After briefly being transferred to tech support (obviously), I finally end up at the retention department. Turns out they are the only department in the company that can see account 1, so hurray! The lovely CSR removes my debit card info from not only account 1 but from my real account as well because I really don't trust them with it at this point. She also issues a refund to my card, which will hopefully be real this time. Two months of phone calls, $180.83 paid in a month and a half for $35 a month internet service, and over the course of all my calls - 9 attempts to sell me FIOS, including the one in the middle of my complaining about the total lack of help from their company. So now, I wait and hope that maybe this one person was properly trained. Wish me luck.
The best part is that Verizon Support is now following me on Twitter because of all my rantings about their company.