[July 16, 2016]: Admin Fee: Verizon's "fee" for charging you the "fees"! Yes, Verizon Wireless has a fee called the Adinstration Fee added to cellular bills, which they charge you for "administering" your account and all the other fees on it. Umm...excuse me - Isn't that part of the cost of doing business which should be part of the monthly service charge? Who comes up with these "fees"? Is it that when Verizon Wireless needs some more money, someone says "Well, just add another 10 cents to the admin fee!" (In a manner similar to Rev. Gene Scott and his midnight televised "instructions" when he wasn't happy with the day's donations for his "teachings", he'd yell out "Play some more!" to his orchestra, until more donations were phoned in.) Another one of the less-than-upfront Verizon Wireless fees which generally leads to the "How did my $30 advertised rate end up being $49 on the bill??" sticker shock.

[Jan 15, 2023]: Forced Re-Signing Up for 3G to 4G conversion accounts: Not sure why, but Verizon seems desparate to force customers to "voluntarily" convert from a 3G to 4G account. What they don't tell you is that they seem to want really old 3G customers to give them a lot more information about themselves which Verizon didn't collect when the 3G account was set up, likely years before. They seem to be requiring customers to provide an e-mail address, where they will then mail some (url-link, tracking? infested) e-mail which the customer needs to acede to before they can continue with service.

It's sort of like when a corporation "asks" all their employees to "re-apply" for jobs which they've had for 20 years! And Verizon is very cagey about it and has their reps not answer direct questions as to why they need to provide all this information.

Even worse, if you have an old 3G phone and want them to send you a new "free" replacement flip phone or other basic device, they try to get customers, usually elderly ones who have old equipment, to re-sign up for a 2 year contract just to get the cheap replacement phone.

They are also doing this for business customers - they asked customers with a 20+ year old set of accounts to re-sign up for service in order for them to continue service and transition data accounts from 3G to 4G. When Verizon was told "Just activate they new 4G devices which you told us to purchase, for crying out loud!" they refused unless the customers re-signed up for accounts which they had for 20+ years... just ridiclous!

[Jan 30, 2023]: Continued Unreliability: After the almost predictable "6-week Verizon copper line failure" schedule which has been going on for over 20 years, our copper lines went dead yet again. Verizon repair was called, and they noted on the ticket that there was a fax on the line, so that the lineman could test to make sure it is working 24 hours a day. If he heard a fax tone when he called the line after he completed his work, it was likely working. So what happens? The next day after it was supposed to be repaired, we receive some automated call from Verizon's idiot computer, indicating that the line was fixed. We call the line, and of course, no fax (nor any dialtone at the location). The PSC is called, and then the usual Verizon "Corporate" people call, and say "Oh, my, we're so sorry the line wasn't fixed..." blah blah blah. This time, when they were asked "Why did the lineman close the ticket when he obviously didn't fix the line?" we were told "Because he thought he was done, or he wasn't able to do the job..." (emphasis ours). REALLY? Verizon lets the wires become unusable, it then sends out techs to the field to fix the wires even though Verizon is aware they can't, Verizon then lets them close tickets knowing that the given line has not been fixed (which also cuts down on the credits to be issued), and to them it's all accceptable?!!! This of course requires more time on our part to deal with, which is yet another way Verizon seems to be making themselves so annoying to non-FiOS, "low-paying" customers that most just move to someone else instead of stand up and fight the crooks and morons who run Verizon.

[May 3, 2023]: More Failure to Maintain Copper: Continued Failure to Maintain Copper Landlines: For the past 20 years or so, Verizon's copper lines in many areas haven't been maintained. Why? They don't seem to want to spend any money on their copper infrastructure in many areas, and, just coincidentally of course, it drives customers to contact them, when they (to emabarrassing extents) push and push FiOS (and then of course try to upsell it for much more money to unsuspecting customers who think they are being forced to move to FiOS). And what if there's no FiOS? Well, it seems that Verizon doesn't really want annoying customers like that, and the continually failing copper is their "subtle" way of "encouraging" you to leave. Basically, it seems if you aren't paying them at least $150 per month, and have bundle upon bundle of phone, internet, TV and God-knows whatever services (and fees and taxes of course too!) they don't want you. So, for 20 years or more, we've had a copper outage on average every 6-8 weeks or so, and they then take forever to fix it - 10 days this most recent time. This of course speeds up considerably each time this happens after we call the state PSC and add to our (no doubt voluminous) "reliability" complaint against Verizon. But we know the routine and all of Verizon's games, borderline lies, and tactics, and what will and will not work with them; most people do not, and most, unfortunately just give up and either put up with it or find (an often inferior) phone solution. This allows Verizon, and their "customer shedding" practices to essentially continue unabated 99% of the time, even though said behavior is wrong and potentially illegal, since most Verizon customers will simply give up and not press their issues with their state Public Service Commissions and/or the FCC due to the utter waste of time and sense of disgust one often gets when dealing with the company!

(NOTE: Although Verizon claims that fiber is "just as good as copper", besides the lack of power issue when there is an electrical failure, the audio quality is much more latent, it suffers from echo, Touch Tones aren't conveyed as well, many Custom Calling features don't work as well (such as Call Forwarding), and generally, Verizon's fiber product (either FiOS or the regulated copper replacement (which they are required to tell customers about but, well, somehow forget to in their ferverent zest and almost religious zeal to sell, sell, sell copper customers on lucrative TV, internet, maintenance, and other "deals" such that their old $35 copper bill goes up to $150) unfortunately offers reduced and inferior voice quality and service than copper does. See the Wireline and Wireless Voice Latency for details.)

[May 6, 2023]: Poorly trained and incomprehesible non-US based support: Increasingly, customer support appeats to be handled from non-US call centers, which often have customer service reps who are difficult to understand, and more importantly, are poorly-trained and utterly incapable of addressing anything other than the most minor issue (and even then they are likely chatting online with someone back in the States for instructions!). Calling repair to take care of the above outage, we spoke to Krishna in their India call center, who was hard to understand. When asked to make a note on the repair ticket that we already tested the line to the DEMARC so they can speed up the work (the 611/repair people and the linemen have asked us to test this for over 20 years), Krishna said "Yes, yes, it is all noted." Just to check, he was asked "What is a DEMARC? You know, the demarcation box on the premises..." and he just didn't answer the question, and when pressed on the issue, he admitted he didn't know. Now it's fine if some guy in India doesn't know US/Canada telephone nomenclature, but he is an AGENT of Verizon, and having the customer disconnect and test at the DEMARC is part of most trouble reports prior to sending a truck, so you'd think the guy would have been trained to know this. Typical Verizon off-shoring and failing to train the staff at the foreign call center. (And Krishna also erroneously said that in order to obtain the trouble ticket (so that we could report the most recent outage to the PSC) we'd need to provide an e-mail address and was adamant about it until he was forcefully informed otherwise - another example of Verizon likely trying to both save money and monetize their customers even more by getting an e-mail address and (faslely) claiming it is required!)

[June 10, 2023]: Constantly raising DSL prices: If you're still a DSL customer in areas where Verizon has FiOS, well, Verizon seems to want to convince you that you are insane for not converting to FiOS! Even if you are happy with your DSL service, and like the fact that it stays on when the power goes out, and that you aren't paying $5 or $10 per month in electric bills to power the FiOS ONU (the big box they stick on your wall inside the house to run FiOS), well, they seem to know better, and that you need to move over to FiOS for your own good! (Oh, bless Verizon so being so concerned about our welfare!)

It's as if they are saying that you're a BAD person for not switching to FiOS, and to punish you, they will raise and raise and raise their DSL rates to "incentivize" you to move over to FiOS. So while internet access and service rates are generally trending downwards, Verizon seems to be unable to hold prices down on DSL service and just keeps raising them on a (very) regular basis.

This couldn't be because they appear to want to get as many people off of copper as possible? Or because they want you, the customer, to pay the electric bill for the service instead of Verizon? Or are they just upset that the $59 or so a month they are charging for DSL (in the DC Metro area with C&P Telephone d.b.a. Verizon, for example) isn't enough, and they want more, more, MORE of your money. Well, they can't get it if you're on copper, so as usual, they seem to be doing everything under the sun to, err, "incentivize" customers to get off copper and get a big, power-eating FiOS box in their homes (which break down way too often - we've had three replaced so far), where Verizon can then sell them hundreds of useless cable TV channels and latent (slow), echo-ish, VoIP-ish phone service in addition to internet access, all unregulated, and adding up to a lot more than DSL used to cost.

Essentially, this seems to be yet another case of of-so-subtle Verizon saying "If you're on copper (and thus regulated, where we have to answer to the Public Service/Utilities Commission), or don't spend at LEAST $150 a month with us, we really don't want you, so we'll do everything to make you go away!" And these are the people we allow to run a significant piece of the US telephone network... God help us all!

[Sept 1, 2023]: It's like you're asking for a divorce!: Apparently, guilt is Verizon Wireless' new retention strategy!

In late June, 2023, Verizon Wireless decided, for no discernable reason (other than perhaps greed?) to raise the rates of basic cellphone plans (flip phones and "feature phones", mainly) for grandfathered CDMA accounts which were migrated to 4G in January, 2023; see above in the Verizon Wireless idiocy post from Jan 15th, 2023. It's not enough that Verizon Wireless wanted to have migrated customers "renew" their service agreements (read: sign up for a new contract) to continue service with a cheap, "Orbic" flip phone, or used the migration as an opportunity to upsell to all sorts of plans and services, or, if all that failed, used the 3G to 4G conversion as a means to get even more information about said customers (such as an e-mail address) so they could "suggest" conversion to paperless (read: stampless, thus less costly for Verizon) billing... No, 6 months after their 3G -> 4G conversion, they're at it again, trying to alienate even more customers, by charging an additional $5 per month. Why? Likely because they think no one will notice.

When we converted from 3G to 4G, and had to call the FCC to file a complaint since Verizon didn't want to send a free 4G phone, Verizon tried and tried, like a cat clawing on to all the furniture to avoid getting a bath, to upsell to a new phone, sell data, add services, etc., and when it finally became clear that they'd have to send a phone for free, Verizon reluctantly capitulated due to the FCC complaint. Even though the sound quality and signal reception on the Orbic are pretty poor, and the user interface sluggish and clumsy, the phone worked, so we kept it.

Then, a few weeks after we received the phone and set it up, a gentleman bamed "Sylvan" from the Verizon Wireless corporate office called, saying that they wanted to Orbic sent back to Verizon, since an earlier phone which they sent to the wrong address "wasn't returned" (according to their highly accurate records, of course), so they are going to need to bill us for a phone (which we still have no idea why they think we have, or why or where they even sent it). But -- Sylvan offered a solution - he would just credit the account for a few dollars every month so we wouldn't have to pay for the Orbic.
We then received a letter from them saying we had agreed to purchase the Orbic (a phone likely not really worth more than $10), with a service term of 0 (yes, ZERO) months, and if we cancelled service before zero months were over, there would be a penalty fee of $640 or so (again, for a cheap $10 phone). We never agreed to this, but since it was for zero months, it seemed like basically a formality since what sort of contract is zero months?

So, six months later, when Verizon decided to charge $5 more, coupled with the very poor coverage since the 4G migration (their coverage and call drops seem to have inexplicably become a lot worse with the transition to -only- 4G/LTE; see Verizon Wireless Dropped Call List for details), we decided to move our service to AT&T Wireless, which, for us at least, has a 4G/LTE product with better coverage and better packet handling (since both voice and data is all packetized with 4G/VoLTE).

Well, upon hearing this, Verizon Wireless would have none of it! First, the always inane call to the Philippines call center resulted in a representaitive (Racheal) telling us "Well, you have a.. err.. err... a ZERO month contract, so you can't leave!". When asked how long that contract lasts for, she said "Err... err... 0 is like infinity so it's forever!" (err...yeah... and just where did she study math?). But really, what should we have epxected? So when Racheal was asked to get us someone in the US who is more familiar with Verizon's contracts (and maybe knew something about math as well) so they could tell us how long a ZERO month contract lasted for, she said "I can't transfer you to the United States..." (which is what they always say now), and when asked for a "Badge ID" or "Employee ID" or some way to identify her so we can report on her reidiculous answers and refusal to transfer us, she said she wasn't allowed to give out any information which would allow us to uniquely identify her for a service review and potential disciplinary action due to her unhelpful (if not dishonest) behavior.

As is nearly always the case with Verizon and their idiocy these days, this eventually got escalated to the FCC, who told Verizon corporate to call us and resolve the matter, and Verizon flat-out refused to call the number we provided to the FCC, and eventually just FedEx'd us a letter indicating we could leave when we want to since we had, well, a ZERO month contract! A month of everyone's time wasted on that. Typical...

SO, finally, when we were "allowed" to leave Verizon Wirless, we needed to call them one last time (please God let it be the last time!) in order to obtain a transfer PIN to port the line over to ATT. The call was answered by a rep named Markeshia, who when the heard the dreaded phrase "transfer PIN", said "You've been with us for over 15 years - it's like getting a divorce!", and in turned we replied "What are you doing now, therapy as well?' (One wonders if an hour of "Verizon Psychology Services" costs more than their typical bulging-with-lots-of-fees FiOS bill??). Markeshia dropped the routine when she was told quite sternly "Look at the notes - it went to the Executive Office, do you think we're not the SLIGHTEST bit interested in staying with you? Just save us all some time and provide the Transfer PIN...", which she then did. Just another month of fun and games with Verizon!

[Sept 6, 2023]: Philippines call center can't reach Verizon in the US!: Ummm... isn't Verizon a phone company? Well, when you speak to the offshored call center in Manilla or Quezon City you'd never think that!

Each time we get the Philippines call center on the phone (it seems random, or perhaps they route calls to the US reps - most of whom seem to work at home on their cellphones - first, and then when all the US reps are busy, eg, when the 100 people or whatever number they are required to maintain to keep the unions, the FCC, and the state regulatory commissions passably happy, the calls are then sent to the Philippines), and they can't reoslve and issue (which is quite often), we ask for a supervisor in the US, but they say that they can't transfer the call back to the US.

We then ask the Philippine representative for their "Badge ID" or some means to indentify them so we can pursue the matter with Verizon corporate, and they refuse to provide it.

So then we tell them "Ok, we'll just refer the matter to the state board of utilities.." and then, suddenly, as if by magic they are capable of transfering to the US and/or giving out a Badge or Employee ID. It's amazing what the words "Public Service Commission" do to change the disposition of stubbornly annoying Verizon employees!

So remember the magic words: Public Servive Commission (and also Federal Communications Commission Informal Complaint) when dealing with difficult or intransigent Verizon employees, and you too will see how quickly those few words "motivate" the given representative to see things in an entirely new light!

[Sept 7, 2023]: T1 service went down, and we're talking to people in India who can't tell it is down!: Enterprise Verizon customers, that is, those paying a lot of money, are also treated like dirt! A T1, which we pay over $400 per month for, went down, and when calling Verizon's Enterprise Customer Support, we were told over and over that they didn't see it as being down and that the "automated server" wasn't showing any errors. When they were asked "Can you 'ping' the IPs assigned to the T1?" the people in India responded "We dont' have that 'tool'..." (Really? Open a DOS prompt / command line and type "ping" - these guys are technical support and they can't even do that??)

So rather than waste time with the incompetents/incompetence which Verizon apparently hires to save money and to "encourage" customers to use their web site (much in the same way people will eat leather if they have no other food source), we called Verizon's collections office, and, surprise, surprise, someone in America answered right away, and when they were told we're not paying until the issue is fixed, we got a technician right away who fixed the matter in 20 minutes! Apparently, if it involves money, then they have people in America immediately answer the phone so Verizon can get their greedy little hands on it as soon as they can! Pathetic..!

Oh, and it's also interesting that when one calls Verizon Enterprise Repair at any of the millions of phone numbers which they have which all seem to go to the same place, the IVR prompts "Are you calling from a Federal, State, or Local government agency?" and if you press "1" for "yes", you immediately get a rep in the US who can help you, yet if you press "2" and you're a mere peasant (who is not affiliated with a government agency and thus can not sanction or punish Verizon for it's annoying incompetence) then you get to wait forever to talk to the India call center which tells you there is nothing wrong with a $400+ a month service which a 10-year old could diagnose better than they can! Again -- JUST PATHETIC!

[Sept 8, 2023]: Verizon takes two months (or more) to change a rateplan!: When downgrading from the (overpriced) "Freedom Extra" unlimited long distance landline plan (for a mere $107.99 per month) to the only slightly less ridiculous "Freedom Essentials" plan (for only $74.99 - what a bargain!), we were told, two months after the change was to be made, that Verizon's system were still processing the issue, and there was no resolution in sight. When they were told that "We've been paying $30 more per month for two months now than we would have had Verizon made the changes", the Verizon rep. (Joseph) had no idea what to do, and said we should just wait (and pay more!) until Verizon figured out what to do!

We had a better idea - call the Public Utilities Commission and report this nonsense (and likely fraud). Interestingly, the minute a regulatory body was mentioned, the matter became more "solveable", and a supervisor at Verizon issued us credits for the months of overpayments, and opened a ticket to get the rateplan properly adjusted.

At most other companies, none of this would have happened since the issue would have been handled properly during the initial call, but, well, typical Verizon can't get out of it's own way, and as usual, they made a mess which escalated to a big issue out of a simple transaction.

[Sept 9, 2023]: Summer's winding down, and Verizon's customer-shedding is back in full swing!: After over a month with poor to no service on suburban copper lines, Verizon made a whole big production of "Oh, we changed the F1 and F3 and cables to the frame... blah... blah... blah... and your service should work and be reliable now.", which it did -- for less than a week!

But of course, it rains a bit today (the 9th of September), and the lines are either totally dead, or so much static that you can't break dial tone, and callers hear a busy signal. In other words, the phones are utterly useless, and not reliable, which is a threat to our safety in an emergency as there is no cell coverage or other alternatives other than God-awful Verizon.

So we call repair (again - it's a weekly event) and they come back with a repair date of October 3rd, almost a month away. This is typical of the pattern which we've seen before, even places like NYC, where the copper "suddenly" fails, and when repair is called they provide some ridiculously long interval to repair a line, likely hoping the annoying, not-too-profitable (for Verzon's "metrics") customers which Verizon can't upsell some $175 per month FiOS bundle to will go away and find someone else.

As we've said: If Verizon doesn't want to be the Phone Copmany, then please leave -- but also make sure that they leave all their Wireline cellular licenses (eg, what they desparately want to keep) for whomever takes over and runs the phone system when they go! That is, Verizon has some very lucrative cellular licenses in large cities due to their historical legacy of being the incumbent landline or "wireline" carrier by virtue of their government-granted monopoly status, and if they abdicate that position, they should hand over the licenses to whomever takes their place.

[Sept 27, 2023]: Verizon Business/Enterprise "Solutions" thinks customers work for them!:Typical of bloated and self-serving Verizon, the T1 outage from Sept. 6th and 7th, even though the circuit was fixed, is nevertheless still presenting itself as a burden, vis a vis all the typical ways Verizon Business accounts are made to follow an annoying and Byzantine process to obtain credits due for Verizon's outage (and that's on a T1, which according to Verizon is supposed to have a "100% uptime"):

1. Verizon Business / Enterprise Business Solutions needs to be called at (800) 937-6000, and the usual poorly-implemented IVR needs to be navigated. The IVR asks for a customer account number, and makes a big deal about letters in the account ("Are there any letters in the beginning of the account?", "Are there any letter at the end?" "What is your outage ticket number?" "Does yur outage ticket number begin with a state code?"), and then after all that, doesn't seem to send one iota of what was Touch Toned in to reps who will be handling the call!

2. Customers are asked to "Select 1 for government aqgencies, or 2 for anyone else"; if "1" is selected, callers are transferred to a representative in the US, whereas if "2" is chosen, that is, you are not calling from a government agency, you apparently aren't as important, and you get transferred to the Philippines.

3. After sitting on hold, with IVR announcements practically begging callers to hang up and instead go to Verizon's web site or mobile application, the reps in the Philippines tell callers (and these are Business Customers who are paying a lot more than $30 for cell service...err... $54.99 with taxes and Verizon's "fees" that is) "Oh, you need to go to our web portal to ask for the credit?" Well, what if the internet is down? What is the web portal isn't working? What if you don't want to use Chrome? (The reps instruct callers to use only Chrome) What if the given office environment uses web proxy which doesn't work with Verizon's bloated web site? So after 30 minutes of back and forth, they take the ticket manually.

4. Once a billing "INQ" ticket is received, the "inquiry" goes to India. (What there is to "inquire" about is unknown - the outage ticket contains all the required information for Verizon to issue a credit - the date, nature, and length of the outage - what else do they need to "inquire" about?

5. India writes back that some given person there will be handling the issue and will get back in two to three business days.

6. If all goes well, India writes back saying that a credit of $X will be assigned to the given Verizon Enteprise account within two months.

[Dec 11, 2023]: Verizon (Landline) doesn't know how to return a busy signal anymore!: After years and years of Verizon's apparent willfull neglect of their copper landline customers (read: We don't want you since you're too much trouble for us, so please get lost!), add this to their ways to "shed" unwanted customets: When we are on the phone, or dialing, or the line is off the hook, or, as typically happens, it God-forbid rains, and the line is electrically shorted due to Verizon's neglect, callers don't receive a busy signal! Instead, callers receive dead silence for a minute or so, or a "All circuits are busy" recording after 90 seconds (assuming they wait so long to the sound of dead air), or if dialed localled, a fast-busy/reorder tone. This is very similar to the nonsense which often goes on with Verizon FiOS, where line signalling tones (busy, ring, call-forwarding, etc) are often flaky and just don't work well, and we're wondering if after 20 years of Verizon's abject failure to provide reliable service (like, well, service which works when it rains!), that after filing so many complaints against them they finally decided to replace some of the copper with a FiOS-like or some sort of digital replacement, that the failure to provide a busy signal is a result of Verizon's typical incompetence at providing basic phone services over its newer network transport methodologies. Just a guess, of course, but after 120+ years of being able to return something as simple as a busy signal, not being able to do so now shows you just how far Verizon has fallen!

[Jan 28th, 2024]: Verizon (Landline) adds voicemail without being asked, and then can't remove it!: Recently, Verizon landline (the regulated side, not the latent, echo-ish FiOS, eg, the people who have to follow de minimis rules which the local public service/utility commissions try to enforce) added voicemail to our line. We don't want it and it interferes with the fax we have on the line. We asked them to get rid of it, and after four calls and over two weeks of trying, the best they can do it delete the voicemail account (that is, the actual voicemail box), but callers are still being sent to the voicemail generic system (where they are asked to enter the phone number dialed). Apparently, Verizon no longer knows how to disable the "No-Answer-Transfer" and "Busy-Transfer" forwarding features which they enabled in order to initially enable the voicemail service. So basically the line is of little use to us, and we intend to demand a credit for every day that they placed voicemail on our line - not only for the cost (if any) for the voicemail service, but also for the inability to use the line in a manner consistent with how incoming calls should be treated. It seems to only way to get then to do anything is to make Verizon pay and/or file complaints with the FCC or the local state utility regulatory commission. (And for those who thought of it, yes, we tried the usual CLASS/vertical codes to disable No-Answer-Transfer as well as Busy-Transfer, but Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, doesn't allow subscriber access to these features in most markets.)

[Feb 1st, 2024]: Verizon landline copper service still unreliable: As per other posts above, yet again one of the lines went out, for no reason other than it rained. So of course the usual call to repair, the endless waits on hold, the linemen coming out to clear the ticket when it's obvious the line is still not working (do they even bother to call to check anymore? There IS a fax on the line and they'll hear the fax tone if it's working...). And of course another complaint about them to the Public Utilities Commission, with a demand for a credit not just for the actual days out, but a more general and punative credit for the unreliability of the service and the costs we have to expend to mitigate against Verizon's apparently intentionally unreliable service (again noted above, they seemingly just don't want us annoying landline-only customers, and if you don't pay their extortion and spend at least $150 per month for FiOS, they don't seem to want you! As we always say "If you don't like being the phone company, then why not pack up and leave like you did in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont? (Not to mention Hawaii, California, and lots of the GTE and other non-Bell markets you took over...) Just when you do get out, make sure you leave your (wireline) "B" 800 MHz cellular licenses at the door, since you only obtained them by being the incumbent phone company (ILEC), and if you're leaving, you don't get to keep them!")

Last Update: 02/02/2024

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