ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

So I'll just admit right off I am on a tangent tonight. I'm mad. In fact, I'm so angry I'm sure there is steam coming out of my ears and the top of my head is probably going to blow off any minute. It frustrates me when companies don't exactly lie to consumers, but they don't exactly divulge all the facts either. In my book, the omission of important details is the same as lying.

Let me give you a little background info for a minute. Last month Keith and I finally decided to upgrade our broke-leg cell phone and to add another line and phone and upgrade our plan. We have had the same cell phone for the past 6 years as well as the same plan. I don't use my cell phone much so we didn't really need a high-end calling plan. Now that our oldest daughter is 14 and entering high school and has a quite active social life we have decided she should have a cell phone at times. So the solution for us was to get another line and phone so that Keith and Caitlyn could share a phone. Keith usually has the supervisor's cell phone at work so he's never really needed one all the time, but on occasion it would've been handy. So we call Verizon and upgrade our $24.95 per month plan (seriously, that's what we've been paying for the past 6 years) to the 700 Minute Select Family Share Plan. This is to include 700 anytime minutes to share between the 2 lines, unlimited nights & weekends, unlimited text messaging (very important when you have a teenager), unlimited domestic long distance, no roaming charges, no activation fee, etc., etc. all for the fairly reasonable price of $99.99 per month. Now that was kind of hard for me since we'd been paying 1/4 of that cost for so long, but I went ahead and made the switch.

Imagine my surprise when we got our first bill tonight in the amount of $287.08. Yep, that's right, almost $300. I nearly went ballistic! I started clicking on links and looking at all the charges and I was getting angrier and angrier by the second. For one thing, they charged us a roaming fee on our OLD phone in the amount of $13 (an account that we paid in full at the end of April), $60 worth of activation fees, and some kind of "get it now" download fees for things that were supposed to be FREE. I kept looking at that and thinking, "Okay, that's bad. But even with all those added fees, it still shouldn't add up to almost $300. So I called Verizon and this very sweet and sympathetic customer service girl told me, "I'm so sorry. I can certainly understand why you're freaking out about your bill; I would be too. The bad thing is, Verizon charges you for the first month, plus another month in advance on your first bill. I don't know why they do that, but they do. I think they just want to make sure they don't get stuck with someone who doesn't pay." Whatever. That's fine for first-time customers, but we've been with Verizon for 6 years and always paid our bill in full and on time.

Wow. In the hour or so that I was on the phone with the customer service rep who was "helping" me upgrade our phone/plan she never once mentioned we'd get billed for two months on our first statement. So yeah, I am more than a little ticked off about this. It's ridiculous for companies to misrepresent (by omission) their services. Would I still have ordered the new phones and upgraded the plan? Certainly because we needed to do it. I wouldn't have liked it, but I would've done it. The difference being that I'd have been expecting a big bill the first month rather than getting this huge, unexpected shocking billing statement.

Well as it turns out, the gal I spoke with was very helpful and apologetic. Of course there wasn't much she could do about the double billing but she did help me out some. She removed the activation fees that weren't supposed to be there and took off that crazy roaming fee that shouldn't have been there (after confirming with me that I wasn't anywhere near Canada on May 2nd - I was just over the IN border in southern MI and hoping they weren't going to consider that CANADA for billing purposes!) so when it comes down to it, we still owe Verizon $216.03. Yikes! I'm still mad but what can you do? If we cancel our service saying we were misinformed they'll charge us $250 as an early cancellation fee. So I'm going to suck it up and pay it and consider it a lesson learned - the hard way. I hate those.

And just for the record, I did not get nasty with the customer service rep I spoke with tonight. I refuse to take my frustrations with companies out on the people who work for them. I realize it isn't their fault and they can only do so much. I've also found through experience they are much more willing to try to help you find a resolution to your problem if you treat them with respect and kindness.

There's my vent. I'm still not liking the facts, but I'm over it and moving on. Let's see what surprises tomorrow has in store. ; )