…a huge case case of angina and frustration – an undisclosed charge of $7 just to give them money. Not even via a third party app! Who do they think they are – the airlines?
Take a deep breath, Skip. OK, I did. Didn’t help. All I wanted to do was to:
- Pay off TMEW’s cell phone bill early.
- Pay her entire portion of our shared account off for next year (yes, this is a thing with me)
- And do it talking with a human
Easy peazy, right? I have the money, I’ve been a customer for decades, used their website a lot. One would have thought contacting a live person would be simple – “Contact us” page, a number at the bottom or top of my account….wouldn’t they WANT to talk to their customers for requests (or sometimes, complaints)? Not so easy peazy…
Why? The Verizon Wireless site didn’t want to give me the options I wanted in paying. Fool that I am, old school that is my hallmark, I wanted to talk to….you know, a real human being. I didn’t want to use their website, didn’t want to use their Chat service either. Just yak with a guy or gal on the phone that knew how to get stuff done. That said, look at that image above. Study it. What information does it have concerning calling Customer Service? Yeah, me too – an 800 number.
I had searched and searched and searched for such a number – they don’t make it easy to find. Either that or I just couldn’t find it first time around. Or the second. Or the third. For a company that says it “values” their customers, they have made it real clear they don’t want to talk to you. Email address – yep. CHAT service – yep. Phone – nowhere could I find it. At least when I first wanted it.
So, I reluctantly used the CHAT service. Bad mistake. I came THIS CLOSE to closing my account altogether for both lines. Such a present on Christmas Eve – here’s the CHAT transcript. It started out ok but devolved from there and it was a long, long, frustrating CHAT session. I’ve bolded a few parts. And since I was keeping track of the messages offline, I found that the Official Transcript didn’t have everything (gosh, wonder, that):
Hey, ! I’m your Verizon Wireless digital assistant.
In a few brief words, let me know how I can help. If I can’t answer, I can get you to a live chat rep who can. You can also start with one of these popular topics:
- View your bill
- Make a payment
- Manage my account
- View data usage
You – Live agent please
Sure thing. Select an option below, and I’ll connect you with the right person.
- Managing my account or bill
- Using my device
- Tracking a recent order
- Placing a new order
Yeah, it’s a real intelligent digital “assistant”
You – Managing my account or bill
Verizon – Great. What would you like to know about account or bill?
You – I was never told that a $7 charge would be applied to my bill simply because I wanted to talk with a live customer rep in paying my bill!
Verizon – Hello there!
This would be Casey, the Verizon CHATter
You – I will try to be calm about this.
Verizon – Thank you for being patience with this matter.
Verizon – No worries!
You – I chatted earlier with Michael in asking for a phone number to call so I could talk with a human.
Verizon -I will definitely look for options on how I can help you with the one time charges in the abill.
You – I explained that I wanted to pay off my wifes phone AND pay her portion of my cell phone bill for all of next year.
You – I then talked to Keith on the phone – he assisted me with both payments.
You – THEN my wife said she got a text about your $7 charge on my account simply because I wanted to talk to a real human.
You – I ALSO just saw your email tell me the same thing
Verizon – I know this is not what you were expecting and yet you are able to handle this issue very professionally. I appreciate you sharing this information with me.
So I copied in the contents of the email
You – Payment details
You – Payment date 12/24/2018
You – Payment amount $240.00
You – Payment method MC ending in 9999
And then, the kicker that set me off:
You – Agent Assist Fee $7.00
You – View payment history
You – A $7.00 fee has been charged separately to your account for completing your payment arrangement with an agent
I had actually completed the transaction a bit ago in CHATting with Michael who then gave me the 800 number and I talked with Keith. AT NO TIME, did either Michael or Keith inform me that a surcharge was going to be in place simple to give Verizon money in talking with the live human in Customer Service who actually completed the transaction.
And now the real saga begins:
Verizon – I am now verify the charges. Please allow me a few minutes.
You – At NO time was I informed that talking to a customer service rep directly would result in such a charge.
You – Who do you think you people are, the airlines?
Verizon – I do understand where you are coming from. Seeing unexpected charges on the bill is really something that must be stop. I am a consumer as well.
Verizon – Normally, we suggest to process your payment online or with our Self service options to avoid service fees. And as I customer service, we also aiming to provide you the help that you need.
You – I’m on your site right now staring at your Customer Service number – NO indication of surcharges.
You – Suggest?? Sorry, that’s not an operative word in this case.
You – Tell me, where is it stated on your website that calling a Cust. Service Rep to process the fact that I want to give you money will cost me even more money
You – Does your management even get the irony of charging me money simply because I wish to give you money before I have to?
Verizon – I value the point you raised regarding your concern with the one time charges on your bill. Your feedback is very important and rest assured that this will be escalated so we can check options on how our customers will not be billed for service fee moving forward.
Moving forward. Moving forward? In short, a blow off as in “sure, we show some faux concern about what we did to you now and we’ll fix it in the future. In the mean time, pound sand as we assume you already know this.
Future? What about the immediate past? You charged my account with a fee that I didn’t realize and you didn’t think it important to tell me that. In fact, while it may be small, it still ends up to be 10% of my bill! How is this good “customer service”? So I asked for summary judgement:
You – I want the charge removed immediately.
You – Not after this incident has been reviewed, not after your managers discuss it, and I’m not happy with the happy talk of moving forward.
I then immediately was informed that the “heels were dug in”:
Verizon – We don’t normally make adjustments for this type of charges as it is valid. I want to make sure I am able to extend all possible help that I can provide. What I can do is to make a full documentation in your account for the next representative to be aware of discussing all the charges in the account.
And this next bit REALLY started to “light my fire, light my fire” as the old The Doors song said:
Verizon – For future reference, you can also pay your bill via My Verizon App m.vzw.com/m/paymybill.
Verizon – You can also set up auto payment on your account to make sure that you will be updated on your payment.
It’s never a good thing to essentially call your customers stupid. Especially very long term ones which have extensive payment histories on using their site. And making yourself to not look all that smart with telling me I should know about the fee but then informing me, as if I was a complete numbskull, how to pay my decades long monthly bills.
If the effort to review such was even made. Because then he would have known that I had paid the bill in advance at the beginning of the year. With a surplus.
You – Fine, consider this un-normal because you folks dont make it clear, anywhere that I can see, nor in the CHAT with Michael or on the phone with Keith, that I would be subject to that charge. I was never given a choice to hang up and not incur a fee.
The response? And that’s when I decided not to be condescended to. Which he continued to do:
Verizon – Thank you for your understanding. You can also pay you bill online via your My Verizon page> Bill> pay bill.
Verizon – I can also send you a link on how you can set up auto payment.
The condescending….it seethes. I decided to just go direct:
You – No, I am not UNDERSTANDING of anything and NO, I don’t want to auto pay.
You – Are you going to remove the undocumented charge from my account?
You – Please connect me with your manager.
Did he listen? Did he acknowledge my request(s)? Well? Heels digging in more:
Verizon – I would love to make an adjustment for this to help you lower down your current bill. As of the moment, this is a valid charges since the processing of your payment was done over the phone.
You – Then love me back and do the adjustment. If you give no warning that there is a charge, it is an invalid charge. I’ve already asked you where on your website, already informed you that I was not warned TWICE that there would be a charge applied to my
You – account (earlier chat, talking with your customer service rep directly).
You – Please connect me with your manager.
You – You have so far refused to tell me where on your website that charge is documented.
Verizon – I do understand that you want this to be fix today. I will assure you that our manager will advise the same as what we have discussed earlier.
You – Fine, then have him or her tell me that now please.
Finally, he lets me know where the spot is on their website where it talks about this “valid charge”:
Verizon – To see the notification that there will be a $7.00 service fee for processing a payment with a customer service representative, please check the link below.
Verizon – https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/promise-to-pay-faqs/#promise-to-pay
Verizon – Please look for Question number 6.
Verizon – That pertains to all payments processed/made with a Customer Service Representative over the phone or in a Verizon store.
So I went there, to their FAQ page. So tell me, dear reader, regardless of whether you use Verizon or some other carrier – when you go to pay your bill, regardless of the method, do YOU first go to their Frequently Asked Questions page? Really? So I asked Casey that question:
You – So before I call, I was supposed to even THINK that I had to review your FAQs?
You – Again, please connect me with your manager.
You – At least when I bought the phone for my wife, I was told about the fee. TODAY, I was not.
Again, the apologist statement of “hey, moron, you could have avoided our self-imposed fee (because we don’t really don’t want to talk do our customers) if you had just paid it online”. You know, that fee that we don’t talk about when finally giving you the right information on how to contact Customer Service which we really don’t want you to use but we have to have one for appearances sake.
Verizon – I know you are under the impression of not having an extra charges for paying your bill with our Customer service Representative, that is why Verizon offering a self service options to avoid getting this type of extra fees.
Verizon – I know you are under the impression of not having an extra charges for paying your bill with our Customer service Representative, that is why Verizon offering a self service options to avoid getting this type of extra fees.
Verizon – I know you are under the impression of not having an extra charges for paying your bill with our Customer service Representative, that is why Verizon offering a self service options to avoid getting this type of extra fees.
Verizon – I know you are under the impression of not having an extra charges for paying your bill with our Customer service Representative, that is why Verizon offering a self service options to avoid getting this type of extra fees.
Verizon – I know you are under the impression of not having an extra charges for paying your bill with our Customer service Representative, that is why Verizon offering a self service options to avoid getting this type of extra fees.
And while the official transcript doesn’t show it, that message appeared over and over and over again.
You – Spamming me with the same message over and over again isn’t helpful.
And neither was the message of how to pay my bill in the future. Which was NOT my question nor my complaint when I went online to complain about the $7 talk-to-Customer-Service-surcharge because I didn’t want to incur an additional $7 surcharge about the $7 surcharge. And Casey continued on this path with a “what a good boy am I” methodology. My blood pressure kept inching up:
Verizon – I know you really want to get rid of the service fee, you can also pay your bill via the automated phone system by simply calling #PMT from your mobile phone or from any other phone. Follow the prompts to make your payment.
Verizon – Rest assured that you will not be billed for the service fee once you use all the self service options that I provided above.
You – You’ re trying to salve me with a problem that I don’t have at the moment. Are you going to connect me with your manager, Casey, as I have asked?
You – At my end of this Chat session is the text box in which I write. It is labeled with “Tell us what you need“.
Finally, a positive – but I missed this first time around and we crossed messages:
Verizon – Thank you for being patience with me. I am coordinating with my supervisor while chatting. And as part of our appreciation of your business, I am now processing the credit here, you will receive text and email confirmation of the credit once applied.
You – I keep trying to do that – you aren’t listening but you are prevaricating.
Verizon – I am here to help you, I am exhausting all my resources while we are chatting.
You – Please connect me with your manager – is that so difficult?
You – Exhausting? Ive asked for one simply thing over and over – may I please talk / chat with your manager?
You – How hard can that be to do to transfer me to him / her?
Verizon – I’m with my manager right now and monitoring the adjustment I am working now.
You – Youve told me all kinds of things to do in the future – but that doesn’t remedy what has just happened.
Verizon – a $7.00 credit was successfully applied on the account.
And then I caught up with his messages – success!
You – THANK YOU!
Verizon – You will also receive a text confirmation regarding this adjustment.
Verizon – You are most welcome!
Verizon – I would like to make sure I am able to cover and address all your concerns today, please tell me what else I can do for you today to make this an exceptional customer service experience? <br/>I will do everything that I can to further help.
You – Casey, I appreciate and thank you for doing that!
Verizon – I should be the one thanking you today because I will not make it possible without your help, understanding and patience.
Verizon – Was there anything else I could do to make this an exceptional experience?
You – You are welcome. Now, at the risk of jinxing my Merry Christ, I wish you a Merry Christmas – and give your managers hell for putting you into this position.
Verizon – Merry Christmas to you and to your family as well!
Verizon – I would love to assist again a very patient customer like you.
Much of success was validated again: showing up and being persistent even if it took a long time to get through this. Do I blame Casey? Not for surcharge – that is on both Michael and Keith for not informing me of that charge in the first place. For telling how to handle my payments in the future as if I was a nitwit? Yes.
Most of all, though, Verizon’s management is at fault for this. Such a policy is done at that Director or higher level to impose such a fee. It’s also on them for not checking “where can our customers see that fee” IF they wanted us to see it – the possibility does exist that they don’t. Certainly, in following the website to Michael to Keith, the possibility is open. It continues to be open as Casey kept insisting that “it will be reviewed” as if we all hadn’t heard that one in the past and then blame it off on a webpage that any long term customer is not going to check before putting in a payment.
Such a timewaster this was. Was it about the $7? Certainly people hate being nickeled and dimed over things and I’m no exception. I was incensed that I was charged money simply because I wanted to give them more money than I owed. And incensed that Verizon didn’t make it clear, but more the former than the latter.
You know, I try to defend the Free Marketplace and capitalism all the time. In fact, I’ve spent a LOT of time over at Treehugger lately doing EXACTLY that, mostly because hardly anyone else does in that batch of Big Government Firsters and eco-socialists and skewing their arguments. But this bout with Verizon?
This incident has placed within me the idea that perhaps it may be time to change carriers. It’s not one I would take lightly – I’m a perfect example of a customer once acquired is a long term one. That said, it is also an example that it only takes a single incident, even over a rather small amount of money, that can put that long term relationship in danger. And it is, indeed, at risk. No, not over the money bit but it is over the Principle this incident violated (tell your customers and then let them decide to pay or not the “fine” applied simply because I wanted to give them money and wasn’t warned of the hazard of doing it “old school”.
Most likely, I would have simply said “OK” and continued on but to find out via a text was just a character too far.
