It should be illegal!

I am so PO’ed at Verizon that I could spit nails right through my screen. Not that I’m surprised. Remember that I became a Comcast customer on April 5th and a former Verizon customer that same day.

Today I thought I’d check my Verizon email just to make sure that the account was closed. It wasn’t. Still getting loads of junk mail.

So I called Verizon and said that I’d switched over to Comcast on April 5th, but my dsl account seems to still be open. I’d been told that Comcast would make sure the accounts were closed. I signed a consent form just for that purpose. Well, the woman said, my account was still open. But my current bill said that I owed nothing and, in fact, it looked as if my account was closed, though not technically. Oh, and I am getting a $126 refund check for overpayment on my phone account.

She couldn’t explain why I was getting an overpayment refund on my phone account (that would represent something like four and a half months of phone charges), but the check would be in my mailbox in about a week.

I thought, well that’s a nice surprise, but I won’t plan on spending it for a while. Just in case, you know.

Then I asked the woman if my DirecTV subscription was cancelled, too. She said I’d have to call DirecTV to find out. They don’t show DirecTV accounts on their system.

So, I called DirecTV. And what do you know, my account is still active. The nice woman asked if the reason I wanted to cancel my account had anything to do with DirecTV service. I said no, not at all. I just had major issues with Verizon’s slow dsl and their wonky billing practices. My bills never made sense and they were prone to charging me twice for DirecTV services every other month since January. I never exactly knew what my bill would look like. I switched over to Comcast’s discounted bundle of services, which includes cable television.

I asked her if I owed money on the account, since it was still open. She took a gander and said, “Yes, your outstanding balance is $174.45.”

Well, that floored me. That represents 2 months of charges that I certainly paid, plus this month’s charges for service that was supposed to be cancelled on April 5. I mentioned that to her. She said she’d take a look and put me on hold for several minutes. When she came back she sighed deeply and said, “According to our records, Verizon paid us each month for your DirecTV services, but wasn’t able to collect two months of charges from you. So they turned the charges over to us as unbillable funds—basically a charge back. That means we are supposed to bill you directly for the outstanding amounts.”

Wait a second. Does that make sense? Verizon paid the monthly charges to DirecTV, took my money every month then turned around and charged back two months of fees to DirecTV for them to collect from me? And issued me a refund check? Now that’s really brilliant.

Have I mention that Verizon’s billing department is a nightmare?

I guess that would explain the $126 refund from Verizon. Well, not really, but at least I know where it’s going to be applied now. What I want to know is what Verizon was doing with my money for the past couple of months if not applying it to my DirecTV bill. The way it works, I believe, is that they pay the charges each month, then collect from me at the end of the month. Except they had trouble figuring out what to do with my payments on the months when they charged me for two DirecTV subscriptions and only had to pay DirecTV for one—and then Verizon charged me nothing the next month, while still having to pay DirecTV.

Are we all confused yet?

And, of course, I owe money for this month because Verizon didn’t notify DirecTV of cancellation of service. The DirecTV woman said, “I can understand why you left Verizon. I’m so sorry you had this trouble.” She also indicated that it’s not exactly good p.r. for their business, either. Not their fault, though.

Maybe they should revisit the benefits of partnering with Verizon.

The nice woman gave me the address for the DirecTV folks who handle customer relations issues and advised that I explain the situation to them and ask to have the current month’s charges waived. And, of course, I can use Verizon’s refund check to cover the rest of the outstanding charges. In effect, I’ll owe them nothing. But I have to run it through their customer relations people first. She said it’s pretty much a sure thing that they’ll waive the charges if I send a copy of Comcast’s signed work order from April 5 and a copy of Verizons refund check. Verizon should have notified them of cancellation of services since they were acting as proxy for DirecTV when I signed on for their bundle of services. As for their stunningly awful billing practices, I might even catch a break on that, too. As a gesture of good will. Not that I’m counting on it, but I do intend to make my displeasure clear on that score.

How does Verizon get away with such horrible accounting and billing practices? And they couldn’t even explain to me why they’re sending me a refund check. Is that not totally ridiculous?