Be careful on having Verizon Fios as your internet service provider, TV and phone bundle packages. Where Verizon might charge you for cancelling some of the bundle package, in other word let say you have Verizon Fios internet TV and Phone for many years, then you decided to remove TV and phone since you don’t use it much or not at all. You may be in for a big surprise penalty fees for early termination.
So you’re a customer for over 8 years, and every 1 or 2 years contract get renewed and you pay a little more each year, it keep on increasing, that’s fine. Then you realized that you’re not using their phone service much or not at all, so you decided to contact Verizon support through chat, and ask to see if you can cancel your phone without penalty or fees (using occurred for early termination of contract), the answer was “No” you’re not under contract, you can remove without any penalty, however chat support do not have access to remove bundle package, so they gave you a number to call.
So you called and asked to get the phone removed from the service bundle, and the customer rep. from verizon did not mention anything about the early termination fees penalty, in fact they said you’re been with us for more than 8 years, and you’re just removing phone service but keeping your internet so you do not get early penalty fees, and you said that’s great. An email was sent for you to confirm the charge and next charge, looks good and you confirmed.
A week later or so, a bill was sent and you noticed a whopping hundreds of dollars was added to your bill and you found out it was for early termination charges. You contacted Verizon support a gain through chat first, chat support apparently useless most of the time because they do not have access to perform many tasks, they can only provide information and trouble-shoot nothing else like changing account information. So you called Verizon customer support rep. and explained the situation about penalty fees was not informed during the cancellation process on the phone, but customer rep. said they do not know why it was not informed when it supposed to be, and customer rep. said chat support do not have full access to many areas of the account … so you’re left with a hmmm, what do I do now? Verizon chat support said no contract for phone service, can remove without penalty fees, customer rep on the phone did not say penalty fees will be added to next month bill and in fact customer service rep. even say you’re just removing the phone service but keeping the internet so there would not be any penalty fees like early termination. You get an email indicating new charges for next month and confirmed nothing mentioned about the early termination fees.
The customer rep. trying to resolve but basically saying nothing can be done to remove the penalty fees, you would need to pay because it’s in the fine prints if you cancel the service then you pay the remainder penalty. This is where it probably not clear to the customer, maybe it meant to say any part of the bundle package cancelled you will get penalty fees, but then why Chat Support did not know this, why customer rep. did the changes / removed the phone service did not know this? In the end, the best thing customer rep. can do was renew your contract restart your 2 years with a bit higher price, but still not guaranteed this will go through or you will still have to pay for the penalty …
So be careful with Verizon Fios bundle package and contract agreement, they renewed automatically each time, it’s not like you’re in contract for 2 years and that’s it, after that you can cancel anytime, WRONG! they renewed automatically without informing me you in a way that say “HEY YOUR CONTRACT WILL RENEW and you will get charge $50 more month” unfortunately it does not work that way, before you know it, you’re stuck with another 1-2 years contract, it’s in the fine prints, a lot of people will missed.
Sadly to say, this kind of business will loose lots of customers soon, if Verizon don’t do something about caring for their customers in term of proper notification and having the customer actually confirmed that they would like to renew and the new price they will get charged monthly onward for 1-2 years etc. Yes customers agreed that they agreed to the contract when they first sign up, but still if you really care for your customers then you should send out notification or some verbal or online confirmation for contract end and new contract price etc. many people will eventually looking at this as a trick, scam, lure you in and you get stuck forever and each year you will be paying more and more …