Every once in a while, the little guy wins...
The gist of the story is that our office tried to change internet and phone companies. Having been on this earth quite a while, we prepared for this by reviewing our contract (which had been bought out by Birch), contacting Birch well in advanced of any 30, 60, 90 day window crap and asked for specific instructions on how to make this switch without the so called Early Termination Fee. We had been with them for 14 years. We followed every single instruction and went further with our letters to them because of other people's bad experiences. This was 2016.
In spite of our efforts, we were still charged a fee of about $3000. We started the process of refusing the charges, etc. No less than 6 months later, they sent an email asking us about renewing our contract and that if we didn't they would cut off our phone service. I told them we had not had their service or equipment for 6 months. That prompted further late fees bringing the new bill to more than $8000.
Filed a complaint with the FCC. Oddly enough we had never been notified of the class action lawsuit against them for this very thing.
They were so kind as to reduce the bill to $2500.
Letters, calls, one collection notice, total eclipse, Tesla in space - and then yesterday. Credit to our account. New bill: $0.
Buh bye. Buh bye now!
= new reply since forum marked as read
While she was in a nursing home. She was supposed to get free WiFi from the home, but it never worked. My husband set it up on one of our credit cards which paid Verizon $60 every other month for the service. It worked fine for her, then she moved back home and didn't need it. Then she returned to the hospital and died
We had planned a couple of trips, so we used it for those. It worked OK with the worst complaint being spotty coverage.
Last December my husband wanted a better phone with a better plan that he had been getting with Tracfone. The best deal was a Samsung S8 with a great discount from Verizon. Since we weren't planning to use the hotspot any longer, he dug out the paperwork, took it in to either combine the accounts or cancel the hotspot.
Verizon could not find the account for the hotspot. Their accounts are listed by phone number - the hotspot had none. After struggling with it for a month, my husband called the credit card company to have them block the charge. Nope, no way, not happening. As my husband put it, the only way to do it was to burn down the barn (I didn't laugh our barn burnt down last summer 
).
They had to close the account, transfer the balance and credit history to a new account with a new number and send us new cards. We had to hunt down any recurring charges that came to that account and give them an alternative place to bill.
It was insane.
