Verizon, lack of courtesy refund

Verizon Wireless
Customer Service Department, PO Box 96082
Bellevue, WA 98009-9682
To Verizon Customer Service –

I am writing to let you know that I am disappointed with your current customer service. Thank you for reviewing my situation described below, related to cell phone number 203-249-9102.

In August, my wife was online and entered her cell phone into a website to get a recipe for dinner. In retrospect she should not have entered her number, but she was not aware of the repercussions at that time. As a result, in August and September we were charged a $9.99 premium text message fee. Upon noticing this charge, we called Verizon and we were able to cancel future charges.

Glenn Mason, my father, contacted Verizon in November asking to have our account refunded because we were not aware of their charge and we never used (or knew) of the service. He was told that his account could not be refunded. Unsatisfied, on December 3rd I went into the Palo Alto Verizon store and asked them to credit our account the $19.98. I was told that I had to call customer service because they could not credit my account in the store. The woman that I spoke with on the phone then proceeded to tell me the following:

• She said they could not because it is not on our current bill and too far in the past. I went onto ask that since we are still enrolled with Verizon if they could credit our future bills and that my father tried to do this when he found the charges but that he was denied the courtesy refund. She denied my request.

• I then asked that if we had called as soon as we saw the charge, if they would have given us the courtesy refund. She said that they might have considered it, but probably not. She said that they have no control on 3rd parties billing fees. I wondered to myself what if the fee was $200? What if another 3rd part company had taken advantage of us? Isn’t Verizon partly responsible for protecting their customers? With the size of Verizon, they should be able to request refunds from their third party partners.

• Since she was unwilling to give a refund, she told me that I should talk to the store representative because they were able to give refunds in the same way that the customer service line was able to give. I said that this statement was in direct contradiction to what the representative had said in front of me (and the representative again defended her inability to give refunds).

In summary, I am frustrated by Verizon’s inability to be flexible, their lack of protection for their customers, and the company contradiction on their refund policy. I asked that Verizon reconsider refunding our account the $19.98. We have been well-paying customers for over 7 years and we would appreciate a courtesy refund as we did not know of or use the service charged to us by your third party partner.

Sincerely,
Brian Mason
www.customyourservice.com