See this?
This is the excerpt from my Google Voice call log that shows the length of my phone call with Verizon FIOS's customer support.
In general, I've had very little in the way of problems with any of my various Verizon services. ...Which is a good thing, because dealing with telcos' customer service departments is never anything less than a frustrating trial. To be fair, unlike my recent run-in with Sprint (on my mother's behalf), I came away from things mostly satisfied (or, at least as satisfied as one can be having had to call customer support in the first place).
At any rate, the long, bloody story.
I'm a convenience fan. Thus, I use things like electronic billing. I've had my Verizon bill and other utilities on automatic payment plans for years, now. To most of my billers' respective credits, such arrangements have been mostly without incident. That came to a crashing end, today.
I'd gotten email notification from Verizon that my auto-pay was due to be processed within the next 48 hours. I limit my exposure to auto-pay problems by having a special eBill checking account linked from my main checking account. Each month, as my direct deposits come in, a budgeted amount is transferred from my incoming checking account and distributed to my bill-paying account, my investment account, my "rainy-day" account and my "playtime" account. That auto-pay warning email is handy, because it allows me to be 100% sure that my bill-paying account has sufficient funds to cover any pending direct-pay arrangements.
When I looked at today's notification, the number looked higher than I was expecting. So, I logged into my Verizon account to see what was up. Perusing my bill, "Oh: my promotional-discount for upgrading my Internet to the 50/50 plan has expired." ...but then I noticed a $0 line-item for a service that I'd thought I'd canceled previously.
Then I noticed that my prior month's bill was $90 more than I expected. Given the $0 line item, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. So, I clicked on the "detailed bill" for the prior month. "MOTHERFUCKER!" There, on my bill was a $90 auto-renewal charge for the "canceled" service ...number 2 of 2 (really amusing that the three prior years' versions of the package were billed in four installments).
I'd managed to not notice the out-sized bills because there was always enough in my bill-pay accounts to cover things. Granted, the slack-balance was lower than expected, but not precipitously so. At any rate, it was a service that I'd previously tried three different ways to cancel:
- You see, last winter, I'd had some glitches with my NHL Center Ice option. The tech support guy I spoke to was able to resolve the technical problem. However, after a couple of years of NHL Center Ice, and recent acquisitions of suitable mobile devices, I was looking for alternatives. So, while I was on the call with the tech support guy, I'd asked, "can you ensure that my NHL Center Ice doesn't auto-renew after this season." He'd informed me that he'd be able to put the note on my account and that it should not renew come the 2014/2015 season. Thus, I assumed I would not see further NHL Center Ice line-items on my bill.
- Come May time-frame of this year, I was doing one of my periodic reviews of my accounts. "Huh... There's still an NHL Center Ice line-item on this account. It's a $0 thing - maybe it's a leftover from the just-past season". Still, I called in to verify that the auto-renewal was, indeed, set to be canceled. The person I spoke to verified that such was the case. Dunno why, but this made me think "ok, yeah: that will not renew itself this fall" and went on my merry way.
- Around the end of September/beginning of October, I opted to pull the trigger on getting an NHL GameCenter Live subscription. It was slightly cheaper than NHL Center Ice, and it let me watch hockey games via my XBone, my Rokus (awesome when visiting my mom since I could still see hockey using her Roku), my cell phones, my laptops and my notepads. With NHL Center Ice, I'd always been stuck only able to watch from home (yeah, I coulda done the SlingBox thing, but that was more effort than I wanted to deal with). With the new NHL online service, I noticed I was having some issues with streaming-quality/stability. I figured, "upgrade to a higher speed-tier - that'll fix it". So, I logged into my Verizon account to do the online upgrade. As Iwas reviewing the account prior to upgrading, I noticed another $0 charge for NHL Center Ice. "Ok... well, there's a button here for letting me alter my services: I'll just use that to delete this thing." I ran through that process, but, by this point (finally), I'm suspect of the damned package actually deleting. Before I committed to the cost of upgrading my Internet speed, I opted to use the web-chat tool to speak to a Verizon representative. I pointed out my continued problem with the persistent NHL Center Ice subscription. I asked if she could ensure that it got deleted. She verified that, yes, it was set to be deleted. I hit finish on the upgrade-transaction, thinking that I was now good to make the switch from NHL Center Ice to NHL GameCenter Live.
Obviously, that last thought was in error. So, I girded myself to deal with phone support. I hit the "call me" button on my Verizon accounts page. A few seconds later, my phone rang.
I navigated the call tree, selecting the "billing questions" options. I got connected to a CSR, and laid out my problem to her. She informs me, Oh, this department only handles payments not billing issues or credits. I think to myself, "Okaaay... Of course the billing questions option wouldn't allow me to actually do anything about a billing problem". But, "whatevs", right? She tells me she'll need to transfer me to the department that handles such issues.
About a minute later, another woman in another department picks up. We do the dance of "what's your phone number" so she can do an account lookup. I inform her, "I don't have a phone number associated with my account: I don't have a Verizon landline and every time I've tried to get my cell number (actually my GV number since 2009) associated to my account, my account's phone association fails to update". This isn't super surprising, given that whenever I've tried to use the web-tool to update my profile, it tells me my GV number is not a valid phone number. Fuckers.
I'd always assumed, however, that the CSRs had a different access method to the account records and could force the number into the appropriate place. Given that the number always seems to fall off my account, I'm assuming that Verizon's accounts system has some kind of de-linter that looks at profiles and prunes out any "bad" data. Too bad that de-linter is as broken as their web UI's number-validator. Probably the same code segments.
So, I tell her, "I can give you the account number to look-up, directly". She insists that she has to look up by phone number. So, I give her my GV number - along with the admonition that it probably won't work. As expected, she tells me that she can't find an account with that phone number. Shocking, I know. She prompts me for other information so she can find my account. Apparently, they have a half dozen or so options to find an account, but giving them the actual account-number is not a valid option.
Ultimately, she finds my account. She then asks me what my problem is. I tell her the long story of the ghosts of NHL Center Ice plaguing me. I ask her to remove the plan from my account and reverse the charges. She tells me that the plan has been removed from my account. To which I reply, "...and the charges reversed, correct?"
She replies that she can't refund me the charges.
I ask her if she's serious. I point out to her that, what she's telling me, is that Verizon has siphoned $180 out of my account for a service that I didn't want and haven't used, and, are now going to make it so that I can't watch the channels I've already paid for.
She tells me she can re-activate the plan and that I can get the auto-renewal canceled at the end of the season. I want to scream at her, "are you fucking crazy? Have you not heard one fucking word of my description of how failfuckingtastic canceling auto-renewal has proven to be?" Knowing that this is unlikely to prove fruitful, I only respond by reiterating the prior travails I'd gone through. She informs me she only has record of the first service call and that she can't help me any further other than the options given.
I fight back the urge to completely lose my shit (yes, it's possible to "even", even in the face of borderline Kafkaesque "customer service"). I ask her to connect me to her supervisor.
She responds by telling me that the wait for a supervisor will be at least thirty minutes. I respond "whatever", because, at this point, I'm committed to riding this hell-train to the end of the line.
Long-silence. Seriously - it was a good three minutes before I hear her ask "do you want to wait for the supervisor?" She had seriously been sitting there, waiting silently - not understanding my "whatever" to mean "yes, connect me, I'll wait". So, I had to explicitly state, "yes, put me on hold for a supervisor"
(Commence crappy hold music...)
(...Continue with atrocious hold music)
Twenty minutes later, the original CSR breaks into the hold music. I'm thinking, "wait, did I seriously just wait another twenty while she waits to put me into the supervisors' hold queue???" Fortunately, she was breaking in to tell me that I was next up in the queue for a supervisor.
Huh... It was actually going to be a warm-handoff. That's a good sign, right?
Eventually, a new voice comes on the line, identifying herself as the supervisor. She asks me for my account info. We go through the "there's no phone number associated with the account" dance. I'd be apoplectic, at this point, but I've worked for the companies that became Verizon and otherwise had to deal with telcos, in a professional capacity, to know that only calls get transferred, not support session or account information data. So, I just shuffle morosely through the steps.
She opens my account. I walk her through the sequence of events, noting that the first CSR had indicated a lack of records on Verizon's side that supported my case. But, I was able to point to the fact that I'd upgraded my account to support my position that I had previously made requests to cancel the NHL Center Ice service. Still, she had no record of the chat session. Apparently, with Verizon's disjoint information systems, just because you're talking to someone using their web-chat tool doesn't mean your account will reflect it. Fortunately, because of the January customer support call, it had established that I'd previously communicated with them. And, even though the tech support guy hadn't actually noted the cancellation request (he probably had, but, given Verizon's crappy inter-department data-transfer, the note probably got dropped in the transfer from one Verizon IT pond to another), it, combined withe the timing of the upgrade, was enough for her to justify issuing me the credit for the service.
So, 81 minutes of phone-hell later, I appear to have finally gotten the service canceled and the charges reversed. Still, I should probably log in, next week, and verify both things.
The worst part of all this? While there is an alternative to FiOS, that "alternative" is to Cox. I could probably link-out to the various Cox customer service horror stories that actually made the evening news, but Cox's CS issues are well known enough to make that redundant. At any rate, assuming the service is actually canceled - and stays canceled - and the charges do end up reversed, I don't currently have to consider dancing with the Cox-monster.
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