So, I have Verizon's fios internet. I subscribed to the (supposed to be) 20mb down / 20mb up service, which was fine for the first three days, but then the speeds started falling off, especially the upload, where I was getting 1.8mb - 7mb.

I noticed over the last couple of days a debit come in at $79.98 on my account, which was the fios internet. Well, I didn't remember paying that, so I called them. It turns out that my fios account is set up to automatically debit my credit card every month.

That's not going to fly, so I ask the woman I'm speaking with to turn it off. She says she can't. I ask why. She says because the billing system won't let her, but it WILL let her if I sign up for a land phone line.

That is fucking ridiculous. I'll spare you the details, but we talked about it for a bit and the end result was that she couldn't remove my credit card number from the billing system without a land line phone.

It was at that point that I remembered someone telling me they could bundle my cell phone (also verizon) with my internet so I could get one bill, so I ask her about it. She puts me on hold (which, by the way, is the same two verizon advertisements that are made to sound like radio shows over and over) and comes back a few minutes later and says yes I found a way to do that, we can bundle your lines together.

Sweet! I think. Then she goes on to say that the BUNDLING has a 12 month CONTRACT, and that it carries an early termination fee of $99, but has a discount of $7.99 a month.

What the flying fuck?!

Verizon has so many contracts, they have contracts for their BILLING METHODS. My fios internet contract is up in 10 months, and my cell phone contract is up in 5. So just to double check, I ask her about what would happen if I dropped one of the services after the end of their contract, and she told me I would suffer the termination fee on the bundle.

I tell her, "I don't want a discount". I'd rather pay full price and not be in a contract. She tells me that the discount is mandatory and that this is the only way she can do it.


After some more arguing, I finally ask her how much the land line phone is, and how much the lower speed tiers are on the internet. The minimum phone line is $11 plus a $6.50 "Access charge", which when asked about is apparently a service fee for "Access to the phone line". What the fuck?

The lowest speed tier for the internet (10/2) was $47, so I had it lowered to that (which is not much lower than what I was getting anyway) and had her add the phone line to my account so she could remove my credit card number from the billing system.

Then she tells me, by the way, there's a $46 installation charge for the land phone line. You have got to be fucking kidding me. After some more questions, I find out that the installation fee is applied after services are rendered, so all I'm going to do is refuse access to the gentleman who comes out to "install" the phone. At least I don't have to pay that.


The net result is that I got dicked with by Verizon, but now instead of paying $80 a month to them, my bill will be $60.64, and I get to pay it on my terms instead of having them just take it out of my account.

I'm seriously considering dropping both services after the contracts are up.

This whole fiasco is actually the second time I've had to deal with them in the past month, but the first time is a whole different story.

I absolutely hate all cable/internet companies with a passion... Except for Time Warner... $100 bucks for cable, internet and phone...

First and only time we had a problem with them resulted in us telling customer support about what happend, and they said because of the problem and for reporting it (a 15 minute talk) they gave us Showtime and HBO free for a year .

If you can get Time Warner, I definitely would... My d/u is usually capped by the server, but if i get a good ftp I usually get dl speed of 26mb/s? I was once able to upload at about 15mb/s, but like I said I'm VERY commonly capped by the service/server.

That whole story is bull crap, I can't believe any company or customer support would do that.

...

yeah, they set it up so almost everything makes you have to sign a new contract, I've found that all cell phone companies do that

I certainly agree that all ISP’s have a habit of screwing their customers, but I’m a little unclear in this story as to where you decided you were screwed. Was the $79.98 charge more than you thought it would be for the service? Were you unaware that you were on a contract and would be automatically billed? Was the service just insufficient?

Back in the day I was stuck with Verizon for awhile. I didn’t have *too* much of a headache with them – had a few outages (one of which I got pro-rated for, with minimal effort), and one billing screw-up, where I got double-billed two months consecutively due to a service upgrade, but that corrected itself, as promised, giving me a few months sans bills. Some of my “clientsâ€

[quote="Saint Thoth"]I certainly agree that all ISP’s have a habit of screwing their customers, but I’m a little unclear in this story as to where you decided you were screwed. Was the $79.98 charge more than you thought it would be for the service? Were you unaware that you were on a contract and would be automatically billed? Was the service just insufficient?

Back in the day I was stuck with Verizon for awhile. I didn’t have *too* much of a headache with them – had a few outages (one of which I got pro-rated for, with minimal effort), and one billing screw-up, where I got double-billed two months consecutively due to a service upgrade, but that corrected itself, as promised, giving me a few months sans bills. Some of my “clientsâ€

Oh, also, I *did* sign a contract for the fios internet, and the terms are pretty clear about there being a termination fee and a 1 year duration, which I'm fine with, but it says nothing about "auto billing" in it. I pulled it out when I got home today just to double check, and I was right. This thing that I signed was from a door to door sales rep that came to my house.

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