Is the Verizon Billing System in Meltdown?

My apologizes to Consumerist, but I stole this intoto here.I wish that they get proper attribution for the content. The reason we bring it up is that we are seeing way too many articles of late on Verizon about billing errors. Most of them seem to revolve around or attributed to FIOS. So something is surely afoot in the code design for how the FIOS billing is reported.

Reader Joan once had a phone number. 15 years ago, she disconnected it. Now she’s being charged for someone else’s FiOS and she’s not happy about it. For the past 6 months she has called Verizon to ask that the error be fixed and each month she’s been told that the stranger’s FiOS has been removed from her bill and that she’ll be credited for the error. It hasn’t actually happened yet.

Joan launched an EECB and cc’d us so we could listen in:

I am a Verizon telephone, DSL and wireless subscriber [redacted].

I have been dealing with an erroneous billing situation and its severe customer service consequences for over six months. In September 2007, the owner of a telephone number I once owned (and disconnected 15 years ago) ordered FIOS. Since then, that person’s FIOS charges have been appearing on my bills, despite different account numbers. The new owner’s account number shows up on my bill as [redacted]. Since discovering the error, I’ve contacted customer service six times - once per month, beginning on September 21st. During those calls, I spoke to [redacted] and a few others whose names I’ve misplaced. Each of them assured me that the problem would be corrected immediately and that my bill would be credited immediately. In each case, this proved false.

My latest bill, dated February 7th, shows an overdue balance of $149.35 for this FIOS service, as well as a new $39.95 charge for another month of another person’s FIOS. In understand from the bill that I not only am I being charged for the other account’s FIOS, but I am being charged interest on an overdue balance that does not belong to me. Further, I have worked hard to ensure my excellent credit standing, and I am concerned that this issue is being reported to credit bureaus. This is clearly unacceptable and should be rectified immediately.

Satisfactory resolution of this issue would include the following:

1. All erroneous charges removed from my account
2. Separation of my account from the other person’s account so that the charges do not reappear in the future
3. Assurance that this mistake has not been reported to a credit bureau (and if it has, assurance that a correction has been filed with the bureau
4. A credit on my next bill for the exceptionally unreasonable amount of time and energy I’ve had to expend in my efforts to have these charges removed.

Given that I have been pressing this issue for six months now, I will expect appropriate resolution within 48 hours.

Sincerely,

Joan

This particular case seems most odd. The customer is to be billed for based on the contents of a 15yo phone number they no longer have? I am surprised that they retain records that far back. We would still be talking tape for a good portion of the corporation. And the AMA records would be for fGTE/fBA/fNYNEX as Verizon was not created till 2000. Not to say somebody just did a cross check on her current DSL associated POTS id and just did the reference manually in the billing system.

But it does beg the question — What is wrong with the FIOS tie-in to the billing system that all these errors are occuring?