Verizon Communications Charged for Services not Received New York New York

My trek with Verizon began in November 2005 when I obtained Fios service to include television, internet and telephone. It never worked correctly despite numerous calls where I would spend literally hours attempting to get a real person and eventually when I would they were more often than not extremely rude. Due to inadequate service and extremely poor customer service I cancelled my Verizon Fios service in November 2007. On the same date of cancellation, I began service with a competing company (Comcast). I received a final zero balance bill from Verizon and everything was fine until Feb 2008 when i received a bill indicating I owed $200.00 for TV and Internet service for the months of November through January (yes, this is despite having service from a different company and not using Verizon). Obviously a mistake, so I call Verizon and was informed that for "some reason" they did not cancel the Internet and TV service when I requested it all cancelled and my account would be credited. In other words, "trust us". Well, all is fine until August 2008 when I receive a bill from a collection agency that works for Verizon. So, today I call Verizon and they agreed that I did not have service, but seeing that one of their employees did not record one of my many calls expressing my displeasure at their customer service, I still owe the $200.00. So in other words, at this point Verizon is participating in a form of legal extortion. The collection agency has indicated that regardless of it I owe the bill fairly or not, in the event I do not pay, it will affect my credit rating.

I don't owe Verizon anything, but today I paid the ransom after I received nothing short of a threatening demand from the collection agency. It is no wonder that everyone I know is switching from Verizon to competing companies. This company and the corporate leadership should be ashamed of yourselves for engaging in the extortion of money from even former customers.

Mike
Severna Park, Maryland
U.S.A.