« Seattle Underground | Main | "Euro Hip-Hop Fusion" »
January 31, 2005
God I hate Verizon
We moved out of our place in CA in November - and I cancelled our Verizon phone service shortly thereafter. I'm still trying to get those incompetent bastards to leave me alone.
This weekend, I got a letter from a collections agency on behalf of Verizon saying we owed them $35. Now this was strange for at least two reasons.
Reason the first is that I had spoken to them over a month ago when I got a bill for DSL service in January (see previous note about having had the line disconnected in November of last year). Seems that the phone side of the house hadn't correctly coordinated with the DSL side of the house and they were happily billing me for DSL service over a local loop that had been de-provisioned. They issued a credit for a couple months service and I figured that would be the end of that.
Silly me.
The second reason the collections letter surprised me was that, regardless of the whole DSL situation - Verizon direct debited our bill from our bank account - had for years, and had (for the same amount the collections agency was yelling about) just two weeks ago. Now they shouldn't have - 'cause we didn't owe them anything, but they did.
So they took money, and then sent the account to collections for the same money.
So I had a rather terse conversation with the DSL side of the house and got (another) confirmation that the credit was issued, and this morning called the phone side of the house to give them a little bit of grief.
Thing is, I never enjoy ripping into some front-line customer service person. It's not their fault they work for an incompetent organization...
Anyway - in theory the situation is resolved. Verizon has always been a pain in the arse - ask me one day about the 18 months it took me to get DSL service. I guess in that light, it's only fitting that it be similarly hard to get rid of.
Ah, what a Monday.
Posted by dberger at January 31, 2005 8:39 AM