VERIZON WIRELESS FINANCIAL VERIZON WIRELESS, VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS VERIZON WIRELESS FINANCIAL - UNAUTHORIZED DEBIT WITHDRAWALS FOR NONEXISTENT VERIZON WIRELESS ACCOUNT Columbia South Carolina

I have a Verizon account.  One of the main problems is that it probably took you a few months before you caught the error - at $1000 in erroneous charges, it's a problem and the fact it escalated to this amount is your fault.  And yes, there is no way for someone in customer service at Verizon to trace the payment simply by using (a) payment amount (b) tracers.  A customer service person may not even have access to identify which Verizon account it is from your ABA and account number.  The other problem you're probably going to have is that Verizon is going to insist you pay the funds because they don't know that you aren't the customer.  BTW, if you haven't closed your bank account and opened a new account, I fully expect Verizon to continue their ability to get their funds, no matter what your bank says.  In other words, if you didn't do this, the bank will continue to allow the transaction to go through because the bank believes your agreement is between you and Verizon and the bank has no authority to step into that mess.  If someone at the bank told you they could stop the transactions from going through - they're lying.

It isn't really Verizon's fault - it is the fault of one of their customers.  In order for the auto debit feature to be enabled, Verizon would have had to have a customer provide them the information, either online or through one of their stores.  This customer provided your account number and as long as the ABA and account worked, all is well.  Verizon trusts the customer is providing them the correct information.  I know I would.

Now, what to do.  Now that you've stopped the auto-debit from your account, you need to contact Verizon and ask that they escalate your case to a senior case worker or a supervisor who may have access to the customer whose account is tied to your banking information.  You need to have Verizon remove your banking information and have them invoice the actual customer.  You are going to need to request a claim form for a refund because what they're going to have to do is collect the outstanding amount from the actual customer who is fat, dumb and happy (figuratively) because they're not paying a cell bill.  That person is going to have a cow over having to pay several months of cell bills, but that's on the customer for thinking cell phone and data service is free.

I don't know how long something like this can take to fix but I can say it won't be immediate.  The length of time you failed to notify anyone about this makes this much more complex than it needed to be.

Obviously, there is another lesson here.  You really need to pay attention to your bank statements or at least check online a few times per month to verify transactions there happen to be yours.  If you had seen this in the first month and put it to an end, then this would have been much easier to handle.

Best of luck to you.....