or
The Verizon Perpetual Contract
Yes this is the second entry I've written complaining about cell phone companies. Is it just my bad luck or do other people have such problems?
After calling Verizon to check on a confusing $200+ phone bill, I discover they've "accidentally" extended my contract. While I'm asking questions, the Verizon representative keeps on coming up with bogus reasons why our contract expiration dates are unexpectedly late. He puts me on hold and, just for the fun of it, I decide to record the rest of the conversation.
Does that seem like a strange thing to do? I had read about Verizon "accidentally" extending contracts in the past (
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here, for example). Verizon is already well known for its
perpetual contracts. If you make any change to your calling plan, such as adding or deleting a line, or upgrading to more minutes, they will extend your contract one or two years from that date. In practice this makes it very hard to quit verizon without paying a $175 per line termination fee.
So what did the Verizon rep say after I insisted that the contract expiration date was incorrect? How did he explain it? Download and play the audio clip below to hear for yourself. Enjoy!
Recorded March 1, 2006 around 8:45pm
verizon-small.mp3
In many browsers, just clicking on the above link will work. If not, right click on link, select Save As, and save it on your desktop. When it's done downloading, open the file there.
