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Customer Asks For Itemized Bill, Verizon Tells Her To Get a Subpoena
suraj.sun writes with this quote from an article at Techdirt:
"A woman, who called Verizon to try to find out about the $4.19 she was being charged for six local calls, was told by Verizon reps that the only way it would provide her an itemized bill was to get a lawyer and have the lawyer get a subpoena to force Verizon to disclose the information. Instead, the woman went to court (by herself) and a judge told Verizon (.docx) to hand over the itemized bill info. 'It is a basic matter of fair business practice that a consumer should be able to contact a utility about a charge on a bill and learn what the charge is for and learn that the charge was correctly applied. The only verification that Verizon's witness could offer that a charge like [the customer's] $4.19 measured use charge was accurate and billed correctly was her faith in the accuracy of Verizon's computer system. The only way that Verizon would offer any information about a past charge in response to a consumer inquiry was to require that customer to hire a lawyer and subpoena their own usage information. By no reasonable standard could this be considered reasonable customer service."
Typically the LEC can bill for intra-LATA charges however they see fit due to the kludge of complexity the original anti-trust left recovering charges from another carrier. Because these rules are so convoluted and don't even make sense to the carriers themselves they tend toward official policy being "we say so and get a subpoena if you don't like it." As a telecommunications agent and broker, much of my interactions with carriers is resolving billing disputes and bogus charges. I got $ 14,000 back for a client in one instance where I had to file a California Public Utilities Commission grievance and escalate to the top tier of AT&T consumer affairs department. Most consumers don't even realize they have recourse and that the carriers are terrified of regulating bodies... but knowing how to handle these things is why people like me make money.
We were talking in the office one day and someone was complaining about some difficulty they'd had with customer service for a company from which they'd bought something. I mentioned that the "salt in the wound" is that there isn't even a person that you can get mad at (threaten, intimidate, assault) anymore. It's not like there is a PERSON somewhere who can say, "Ah, yes. I took such and such action on the Smith account because..."
The order was created in the computer either by the checkout scanner or by the automated form on the website. The order was filled and shipped by an automated warehouse (In our warehouse, even the pallet trucks are tied into the system and automated. It's a little unnerving to see these unmanned trucks just whipping big pallets of raw materials and finished goods to and fro in the factory.). The invoice was automatically kicked out in a billing batch run and mailed. No human ever laid eyes on it or had any knowledge that your order ever existed.
Think about that.
It's not like you can call them up and complain to the person that made a certain determination. They hire people off the street to sit in the call center and read what's on the screen. If you owe $50, it's not because someone looked and evaluated the situation. It's because that's what the computer says you owe. If the computer had said $55 instead--THAT WOULD BE THE REALITY.
All that remains is for the computer to become the final arbiter. Not being able or allowed to question or even review the automated data is precisely how that will come about.
The problem is not only with external carriers. Verizon's internal billing system just seems to be a convoluted mess of kludges. About 3-4 years ago, a friend of mine with Verizon Wireless bought a house. Her landline phone service was Verizon RBOC. One day they sent her one of those "Consolidate all your Verizon bills and get a discount!" flyers and she signed up. She started getting bills which showed both her landline and wireless charges, and she dutifully paid them.
3 months later she got a phone call from Verizon Wireless about her account being overdue. She explained that she had consolidated billing with her home phone service and had paid. They insisted they hadn't received any payment. She called Verizon RBOC and they confirmed that she had consolidated billing and had paid her wireless bill. But nothing she or they could do could convince Verizon Wireless that she'd paid. They shut off her cell phone service, messed up her credit score, then eventually closed her account and gave her phone number to someone else before finally getting the whole thing straightened out about 6 months later.