Verizon double-billing peak minutes

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cathy - 11 Apr 2007 06:23 GMT

I finally upgraded my calling plan from an old National Single Rate to
the Americas Choice plan. And ever since I've had a peculiar billing
problem.

I place a call to a friend every Tuesday night that starts at 8PM and
ends around 9:30PM. And every single time I've placed this call, they
double bill me for the peak minutes. The off-peak minutes are charged
correctly, but the peak minutes are double what they should be.

This has happened now four weeks in a row. I call customer service,
they write a trouble ticket, and about 3 days later the billing gets
corrected. But they can't seem to stop it from happening in the first
place. It only occurrs when the call starts in peak time and ends in
off peak time.

Anybody else have this problem? Any ideas how to get them to stop
doing it?

Cathy

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Charlie - 12 Apr 2007 15:34 GMT

Any ideas how to get them to stop
doing it?

Just call Verizon support and wait on hold for a while, then talk to an
idiot who will make your problem worse.
After three or four calls you may get someone who can help you.

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cathy - 12 Apr 2007 16:50 GMT

>Any ideas how to get them to stop
>doing it?
>
>Just call Verizon support and wait on hold for a while, then talk to an
>idiot who will make your problem worse.
>After three or four calls you may get someone who can help you.

Been there, done that, except for the part of getting someone to help
me.
Cathy

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Nick Danger - 12 Apr 2007 19:44 GMT

>I finally upgraded my calling plan from an old National Single Rate to
> the Americas Choice plan. And ever since I've had a peculiar billing
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
> Cathy

I haven't knowingly experienced that. As long as we don't use our allotment
of included minutes, I don't examine the numbers too closely. But this sort
of thing is not surprising. It's a simple programming bug, and probably
wouldn't be all that hard to debug and fix. My guess is that Verizon has
been downsizing their programming staff and transferring their remaining
jobs to third world countries. Whoever wrote that code probably could fix
the error in about five minutes, but that person probably has been
downsized. And those programmers who are left are being kept busy writing
the code to bill for new paid services.

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jgrove24@hotmail.com - 13 Apr 2007 01:01 GMT

> >I finally upgraded my calling plan from an old National Single Rate to
> > the Americas Choice plan. And ever since I've had a peculiar billing
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
> downsized. And those programmers who are left are being kept busy writing
> the code to bill for new paid services.

Plus it is "Tomorrow" in Calcutta, so you're getting billed for future
service..JG

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Thomas T. Veldhouse - 16 Apr 2007 20:19 GMT

> I finally upgraded my calling plan from an old National Single Rate to
> the Americas Choice plan. And ever since I've had a peculiar billing
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> Anybody else have this problem? Any ideas how to get them to stop
> doing it?

You do realize that your ENTIRE call is at the peak minute rate as it
was initiated during peak time. You can avoid this by hanging up at 9PM
and calling right back.

So, are you sure you are double billed? Or are you just being billed
for all the minutes as peak minutes?

Signature

Thomas T. Veldhouse
Key Fingerprint: D281 77A5 63EE 82C5 5E68 00E4 7868 0ADC 4EFB 39F0

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SlobbyDon - 26 Apr 2007 16:23 GMT

>> Anybody else have this problem? Any ideas how to get them to stop
>> doing it?
>
> You do realize that your ENTIRE call is at the peak minute rate as it
> was initiated during peak time. You can avoid this by hanging up at
> 9PM and calling right back.

Verizon has billed me at a split rate for many years. I've been a
customer (CA and AZ) since 1999 and don't remember if they ever billed
based on the call's start time alone.

Signature

SlobbyDon

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cathy - 26 Apr 2007 20:56 GMT

>> I finally upgraded my calling plan from an old National Single Rate to
>> the Americas Choice plan. And ever since I've had a peculiar billing
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>was initiated during peak time. You can avoid this by hanging up at 9PM
>and calling right back.

You do realize that you are 100% wrong? The entire call is NOT billed
at peak minutes. The off peak minutes, all the minutes of the call
that took place after 9PM, are very properly billed as Off Peak. The
Peak minutes, all 60 of them, all the minutes that occurred between
8PM when the call originated and 9PM when they switched over to Off
Peak, are correcty billed as Peak. The problem has been that instead
of 60 Peak minutes, they bill me for 120 Peak minutes.

I checked again this past Tuesday, the last time I made a long call
like this. Started at 8PM and ended at 9:39PM. That's 60 Peak minutes
and 39 Off Peak minutes. Sure enough, the 39 Off Peak were correctly
billed, but there were 120 minutes in Peak. However, as of this
morning, that 120 had been reduced down to the actual number of
minutes used, 60. So it appears that while the system is glitching,
it's eventually correcting itself.

>So, are you sure you are double billed? Or are you just being billed
>for all the minutes as peak minutes?

No, I'm quite positive I'm being double billed. The entire call was 99
minutes, but there were 120 in Peak and 39 in Off Peak. If all the
minutes were being billed as Peak, there'd only have been 99 minutes
in Peak, not 120.

And the fact that they =are= reversing the doubled billed minutes is
further proof of the veracity of my complaint.

Cathy

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