Die Fighting In Afghanistan, Pay $350 Early Termination Fee

[Pakman3000]

After a woman's husband died in Afghanistan, a marine felled by an IED, she moved back to her home town to be closer to her family and grieve. In the smaller town, she couldn't get any reception from Verizon, so she called them up to cancel. Despite being a widow and Verizon not living up to its contractual obligations to provide actual cellphone coverage, they slapped her with a $350 early termination fee.

Customer service reportedly told the widow "Nothing could be done" about the fee. Reached by CBS13, Verizon's PR department promised to look into it.

http://consumerist.com/2010/06/verizon- ... n-fee.html (http://consumerist.com/2010/06/verizon-die-fighting-in-afghanistan-pay-350-early-termination-fee.html)

http://cbs13.com/local/marine.widow.ver ... 72409.html (http://cbs13.com/local/marine.widow.verizon.2.1772409.html)

[indyred99]

Eventhough that is who I use now for my new phone I had issues with them before. Hopefully for the widows sake it can be waived.

[River_Rat_459]

That's a load of B.S. We all know that there's someone within the lower level of management for Verizon who can take care of this issue. The prospect of bad press should be enough to convince them to fix it.

[MaximusR3]

that's a load of B.S., i had an extra phone line for a little while for a friend and then she went to boot and planned to finally get her own plan when she got to her MOS school. I explained to them the situation and the customer service agent waived it right there. I didn't have to wait on hold for a manager's ok, they didn't have to have a counsel meeting, they didn't have to wake up the Verizon CEO at 3am to approve it. Just said "oh ok, let me see if i can waive that for you. Ok you're all set and good luck to your friend in the military"

[MaximusR3]

i think what it comes down to is lazy customer service reps. Probably had some lazy bastard, one foot out the door already and didn't want to do anything 5 minutes before closing so they said nope, nothing i can do sorry, bye bye.

Customer service as a whole needs help these days. I don't know how many of you have ever tried calling the unemployment office lately, or if it's only a CA problem but man is it ridiculously out of control. I spent 4 hours a day calling back to back for months just trying to get on hold. Then the day finally came that it didn't just give me the "we're receiving more calls than our system can handle" message and i got to wait on hold for 20 minutes. i start talking to the rep and i ask her right off if they need more workers or a better phone system to handle the calls because it took me months to get through. She said i could have just filed online, which i then proceeded to explain that when you have prior military service within a certain amount of years it tells you that you HAVE to file by phone. We started into the process of filing and she said hold on just a second please. click. dial tone. i look at the clock, it's 3 minutes past 5. I call back and it takes me to the offices are now closed message. That lazy biotch hung up on me because it was closing time and she didn't want to have to stay a few minutes later.

Luckily i learned the secret a week later and got through on the first try. If you're in CA and unemployed, when you get through to the automated system, choose a language other than english or spanish. try korean or something. They may not speak perfect english but they should be able to understand you still and get you squared away. Sad it has to come to that but the current system really is out of control