A discussion about sales, sales tips and advice, and about those who land the deal

Dear Mr. Tudor,

I recently read one of your posting published on December 28th entitled "More Bad Customer Service, Courtesy of Verizon." Related to your posting I wanted to make you aware of an interesting new service intended to make companies accountable for their poor customer service, such as in the example provided in your story.

The service is called 321-CALL-LOG and it allows users to automatically record, authenticate, and notarize telephone and email conversations you have with customer service representatives. The service, to be legally compliant, announces to the agent every 3 minutes that the call is being recorded. 321-CALL-LOG gives consumers a systematic way to make customer service reps accountable for what they say or promised to consumers.

I would like to extend to you and your readers an invitation to join 321-CALL-LOG. Please visit the following link to view the site and register:

www.321calllog.com

Currently the service is on invitation only bases; this to control the amount of traffic that flows through our network, our intention is to make the service available to the general public in the near future. To register please use the following temporary invitation code:

321comeonin

Thank you,

Don Ochoa
www.321calllog.com

I have been living in a Verizon nightmare for so long, I don’t know where to start. I am forwarding an email that I sent last April to get an account problem taken care of, I was told, by phone, that it would be taken care of, I now have another creditor asking for money from an account that I was told would be taken care of. Its funny how this happened because I just blogged about this whole problem about a week ago, I have also added that to this email to give you a little bit of what I have been dealing with. I would really appreciate for somebody to step up to the plate and take care of this so that I don’t have to explain the problem to one more person. I am very frustrated and angry.

April 11, 2006

To Whom It May Concern:

Two weeks ago, I called Verizon and asked about my charges that I am not being collected on, I talked to a man for about two hours about my account, he looked it over while I explained to him what happened, (story below), and saw that yes, I was charged for something that I should not have been, and that he was sending this information to someone in a different department to get the charges reversed. I again called Verizon today to see where the status was on this account and was told that they could not help me and to call back Penn Credit, which I did. Brian at Penn Credit said to call his office back in a couple of days to see if that credit had gone through yet. I am sending a payment of $17.33 today because the original person I talked to on the phone at Verizon said I did owe that certain amount, and said to go ahead and mail you that payment and to not send the $140.12 because it would be in the process of being reversed. I cannot even talk to anyone at Verizon about this old account because they said once it got sent to collections it was out of their hands, but the guy that I did talk to two weeks ago researched it for me and found that what I was saying was true. I am at a loss for words right now and am not quite sure what I need to do now.

The story:

I used to have an extra phone line in my house just for my internet, once I heard I could get dsl in my home, I called Verizon to hook up dsl and to cancel my extra phone line. Instead, they put the dsl on the extra phone line and then when I called them to tell them they needed to put the dsl on my home line, they not only charged me twice for dsl hook up but they also never cancelled my extra phone line, they kept charging me, after receiving bills for the line, I would call and someone always told me that they would cancel that line and to ignore the bill… this went on for about 4 months, finally, it got cancelled, but now I see that the charges were never credited back, instead, now I have been sent to collections.

Thank you for listening, I hope someone can help me clear this up.

Dawn Pontious

ID Number: S0747688

Phone number in question: 425-483-6689

MY BLOG...

Verizon: A Customer Service Nightmare!
After receiving a collections notice from Verizon for a bill of $107.29, for a set up fee for my dsl line, that I had already paid 9 months earlier, I called Verizon to discuss the notice and to clear it up right away. The customer service agent was very nice and helpful and told me that she had reversed the charge to my account and to ignore the collections notice. Boy was I happy to have someone hear me for once and take care of this small issue right away! Well, 3 weeks later I received another notice from a collections agency for a $107.29 bill. I called the 800 number on the notice to clear this up right away. Once I reached a collections agent I explained what had happened 3 weeks earlier and that the charge should have been reversed, the agent told me that Verizon had to contact them to close the collections matter. I was told to call Verizon back and to give them the information. So… I called Verizon and talked to a Customer Service Representative, I again had to repeat not only the conversation with the first Verizon rep but also the conversation with the collections agency and then asked them to call the agency to close the collections account. The agent then told me that they don’t do that, instead the collections agency has to call Verizon to get the updated information. After 2 hours on the phone already I decided to call back the next day and relay the last message that I got.

The next day, I called early in the morning, because I had to get out of the house by 11:00 for a doctors appointment. I called at 8:00am, talked to the collections customer service agent and had to, once again, explain my story. After feeling like she didn’t care what I was saying, she then replied back with, “so Dawn, tell me why you don’t think you owe this bill?” WHAT! Are you kidding me? Did she not just hear my 5 minute speech on this whole stupid mess? I finally told her that if she would just listen to me for a moment she’d understand my problem. Once again, I repeated myself, she referred me to someone else that would be able to assist me better. Yes, I had to tell my story again… but I did it, and with a smile on my face because by now this was kind of humorous. The agent told me that they don’t call Verizon for these things, Verizon can either call them or email them the information so that they could take me off of their collections list. I called Verizon back… after being on hold for 45 minutes I hung up because I had to go to my doctors appointment. Yes, I was on the phone for 2 ½ hours, but I could try this again in a couple of days, its not like it was going anywhere.

A new day, I was rested up and ready to make that last phone call, I was finally assured by Verizon that they’d contact the collections agency and take care of the account. Thank GOD!

I’ve gotta giggle now, I received another collections notice 3 weeks later. I not only had to call the collections agency again that day, but I had to call back every month for 6 months. After the 6th month, I finally called Verizon again and actually started crying with all the built up aggravation. I actually talked to someone that wanted to help me, she actually listened to my whole story and she actually felt bad. With me on the line, she called the collection agency and cancelled the collections account and apologized for all of my aggravation! After adding up all the time I was on the phone to clear up an accounting error on Verizon’s part, I spent 11 hours on the phone! I cringe every time I have to call Verizon, if my phone service is down or if I have a question on my account, because every time I hear that “hold” music, it brings back all the lonely memories of waiting on hold for hours and hours. Verizon customer service definitely needs help, out of the 20 people I actually talked to, only 2 were nice and only 1 listened to my drawn out story and actually took care of it. I think Verizon will give me nightmares for years to come. Good luck to anyone out there that needs to clear up an accounting error with Verizon, I hope you have a lot of time on your hands.