Thursday, January 22, 2009

Um, I don't THINK so

Got my monthly reminder email from Verizon yesterday about my wireless bill. It has the amount due in the email - $7700.

Um, no. I will admit to the quickest of thoughts that perhaps I didn't turn on unlimited texting or perhaps Rachel had gone over the limits anyway, but really, there is no way that my bill should be that much.

SO I went online and looked at the details, and found $7500+ worth of roaming charges for numbers called in California (found that out later). Looked up the customer service number, waded through the phone menu, and said, "Hey, this was not me!" My customer service rep was fairly nice, although he did ask if I'd been to California. Yes, but not in the last 10 years! And certainly not in December.

So after MUCH time on hold, and a referral to the fraud department, it appears that my customer ID got associated with someone else's cell phone number. Since he's located in California, it came up as roaming charges on my bill. The saving grace is that the phone calls I did make are also on the bill, and there are calls originating in NJ within minutes of calls originating in CA. No jet is that fast, so I have a pretty good case, and they seem to have decided it's their fault, anyway.

But I will admit to a brief stomach-wrenching moment. REALLY don't enjoy that. And interestingly, this guy had 2200+ minutes of calls in the month. Really? How do you talk that much?

2 comments:

Momo Fali said...

My husband just told me today that we need to upgrade our plan because we are "way over our texting limit of 500 a month". I sent about EIGHT texts in the last 30 days, so I assumed it was fraud. Nope, they're all my husband's.

Lisa C said...

Yikes! That's scary. I'm glad they seem to be correcting the problem. Roaming adds up quickly so we try to avoid it.
Good luck, that does sound like a heart stopping moment.