Verizon nightmares

At first, when we moved to Niagara Falls, it was cute.

Walk Gord along the river and get a message on your phone, “Welcome to Canada”

Then the data bills started, sometimes $50, sometimes $80. I would call, complain, have the charges taken off. I have a habit of speaking to people at 800 numbers with gratuitous profanity.

“So I called last month because our bill was fucked up,” I say with a smile. “The bastard I spoke to deleted the extra data charge and promised it would never happen again but here-we-fucking are.”

As long as you aren’t using an angry tone, the person in the call center takes care of it and never reacts to the profanity. Beth, witness to many of these encounters, buries her face in her hands as in “oh no. Here he goes again.”

This went on for at least 6 months. Finally, I escalated to a supervisor.

“This fucking problem has gone on for 6 months. The last asshole I dealt with said he would take care of the problem,” I said, “but here we are again.”

This time, he actually understood. He called back two days later to say after his investigation, he realized the problem; we should have free data in Canada on our plan, and he would be giving us a $25 per month credit for the next 12 months as a make good.

Hey, it’s an ongoing problem with Verizon. I got a “Welcome to Canada message” in our living room on Friday. You know, as Sarah Palin said “I can see Russia from my house!”

I’ve been walking on the Great Gorge Railway Trail and come across a panicked Australian couple.

“Can you help us?” the woman said with the panic of someone who thought they were in deep shit. “We just went for a walk, and we got a message on our phone that says ‘Welcome to Canada.’ We left our passports at the hotel. We don’t know what to do.”

I gave her a long hard look and realized she was sincere. Then I gestured to the raging torrent to the left under the Whirlpool Bridge as we faced north and said “do you remember crossing a big river?”

They both started to laugh. They got it. If you are near the border, sometimes your phone picks up the Rogers Canada tower rather than Verizon.

Anyway, back to why Verizon sucks.

It was all fine until September. We were traveling to Ireland and added data to our phones for one month. It cost $100 a fucking line but que sera, sera.

We returned home. The nightmare began. The $200 charge dropped off, as expected.

Then we traveled to Canada and received warning messages on our phones about data charges. Sure enough, in November we received a bill for $818.73, an overcharge of $778.18.

I called Verizon and complained after more than 45 minutes of back-and-forth, the person offered to reduce the amount owed by $300 and told me the data problem was because we had 5G phones, not 4G. When I said that was unacceptable and explained we had been to Canada at least 12 times in 2024 and also received “Welcome to Canada” without leaving our living room. She promised to have a supervisor with more authority call back in a few hours. That call never came.

I called back two days later with the same result and a promise of a call back. This time, I received a call back. They opened a ticket and appealed to a different department to resolve the issue.

A week later, that supervisor called me “Mr. Joseph” like only someone who speaks English as a second language can.

“Your claim has been denied, Mr. Joseph, because there is no data for Canada on your plan and you received messages telling you to stop using data in Canada,” she said.

“I am not in Canada,” I said. “I just received a data usage warning today at my goddamn home. Please re-escalate this crisis and have someone call me back.”

She said she would but no call came. Then we received more data warnings in November. A new bill came, this time for $1,877.18.

I called back again and escalated immediately to a supervisor.

“I can see in the computer that you have no data for Canada on your plan Mr. Joseph. This is why you are being charged.”

“We had this motherfucking problem when we first moved here,” I said. “You should be able to see it in your records. Every month we got charged extra. Then it got removed. Then someone fixed it and even gave us a 25% discount on each line because of the hassle and fixed it so we didn’t get charged for data.”

“Mister Joseph, you have no data for Canada included in your contract. This is why you were charged,” she said.

“We were in Canada at least a dozen times this year using our phones, not counting the times we got a ‘Welcome to Canada,’ message while sitting on the couch. We were never charged” I said. “I just want our phone service set back to what it was all year before September. You can’t change it without telling us.”

“But Mr. Joseph, you have no data service for Canada on your contract. That is why you were charged.”

I asked her to open a ticket again and she said she would call back in 3 to 5 days.

On Day 5, when no call came, I was desperate.

I reached out to Ezra Scott, all-around Niagara Falls good guy currently serving an Empire State Fellowship with the Public Service Commission in Albany.

Ezra did some checking and let me know the PSC handles utility, cable and internet issues. Cellphones go to the FCC. He gave me a link for its website.

I filed a formal complaint for fraud on Thursday afternoon and received an automated response telling me it had been received.

Then Friday morning, I received an email saying they had reached out to Verizon and the FCC seeks to facilitate compromise. Any escalation would come with a $605 filing fee.

Sure enough, I received an email from Verizon’s corporate office in Atlanta. A nice woman named Brea who spoke English as a first language called me back that afternoon.

I went through the whole saga again, beginning to end.

“I have removed the data charges as a courtesy,” she said, “but this type of contract does not include data for Canada and Mexico.”

I won’t go through it all again, but what a nightmare.

“We didn’t change contracts. How do we get back to what we had all year before September?” I asked.

“That would require you to upgrade your service for $10 per month, per line” she said.

“That’s ridiculous. If we weren’t still paying on our phones we would change companies right now. We’ve had Verizon for 20 years or more but your customer service sucks and we’ve had nothing but hassles since moving to Niagara Falls.”

“I’ll tell you what I can do,” she said. “I already wiped out the data charges. I can add data for Canada and Mexico to your phones for the next 24 months free of charge as a courtesy. Then you will have to pay for it.”

“Wow,” I said. “Your job must be a hassle, calling assholes like me all day for issues like this.”

In the end, she added another 12 months of free data. “That is the most I am allowed,” she said. She also sent an email confirming the change and the new billing amount.

It seems like all’s well that ends well but I don’t fucking trust it.