Posts Tagged Verizon
A (Brief) Tale of Slamming by Cheap2Dial
I am posting this in the event anyone else encounters this. I was in the midst of paying bills online this evening, and I noticed that my Verizon bill–for both my home and wireless phone service–was higher than usual. My bill is currently running higher than normal on account of actually having to get local and long-distance service with my current houseguest.
As I was reviewing my bill, I came across the following charges.
I had to scratch my chin here, as I had no idea why my bill had a charge for $16.28. I clicked on the link in my online bill, and I was shown this:
I now find it quite interesting that I am being billed for Cheap2Dial Telephone, a service for which I know I have not signed up. Thanks to Google, I find their website and start poking around. I see that this service offers Domestic Long Distance plans. I clearly have no need for this plan, as I have the Verizon Freedom plan which covers all my needs. While reading further on the Cheap2Dial website, I see the following statement:
How am I billed for using Cheap2Dial?
Although Cheap2Dial is not affiliated with your local telephone company, the monthly recurring charges for the plan you choose will appear on your local telephone bill on the USBI portion of your bill on behalf of Cheap2Dial Telephone, LLC. You will continue to receive the monthly recurring charges on your local telephone bill until you cancel the plan.
It is now pretty clear to me that I have fallen prey to “slamming.” I immediately call Cheap2Dial to have this service turned off. I also inquired as to when this change was made, and it was made on 7 May 2009. I find that interesting as I was in the office all day long, and the only person who could possibly have made the change was my houseguest. I inquired as to if she changed it, and she did not.
My next call will be tomorrow morning to Verizon to have this charge reversed. I will also be making sure that this does not happen again on my phone bill. My landline is not going anywhere anytime soon, but I expect to change my calling plan to the cheapest one once my houseguest is no longer here.
Cheap2Dial and USBI have gained a reputation for slamming customers. I can only advise you to ensure you look at your phone bill and are not a victim of slamming.
A Lesson in Crisis Aversion
In Thursday’s early morning monsoon, I fumbled my Motorola RAZR2 into a nice puddle. I immediately thought the worst, and my concern was what to do with the impending death of my personal cell phone. The problem I was now facing was even worse, as I do not have the optional phone insurance. I decided to not invest in that money-making scheme, given my relatively high rate of success with phones.
I gave the phone a day, letting it dry out completely. After it failed to come back up, I decided to traipse down to my local Verizon Wireless store to confirm that the phone was dead. I waited to talk to one of the techs and explained the situation. They pretty much confirmed what I thought–the phone was dead and I would have to pay close to full retail to replace the phone. In this instant, I was reminded of the problem with the subsidized cell phone services here in the States.
I decided to wait and talk to Customer Service to see what they recommended, and pretty much my alternative was to pay $50 less than the retail price or to get a different phone. After looking at the potential phones available to me and considering looking online, I decided to go back to my old phone–the trusty Motorola e815.
After getting everything setup on my old phone, I decided to play around with my RAZR2. Something strange popped into my head, and I decided to plug the phone in and let it get charged up. When I plugged it in, I got the usual boot menu the phone gives, and it continued to take a charge.
After some time charging, I decided to power the phone up. Lo and behold, the phone worked. I went online and reactivated my RAZR2, and it has been working just as expected. There appears to be no loss in functionality, and it works just as it did before. The crisis has truly been averted, and I will not have to buy a replacement phone.
One of the lessons here is that apparently, the technical staff at Verizon Wireless stores is not as savvy as I thought they were. Of course, this should not be terribly surprising to me as it is. Secondly, for a long-time customer, I was surprised there was not something else they could do for me.
Waiting for Verizon
I am now able to join the ranks of those suffering under the pain that is Verizon Repair Services. The other night, while desiring some General Tso’s Chicken from the local Chinese place, I decided to utilize my rarely-used home phone. I picked up the receiver and did not get a dialtone. Thinking the problem was with my handset, I hung up the wireless handset and picked it back up again. I still received no dialtone.
I grabbed my cell phone and called my home phone. The line rang, but the home phone did not ring. Obviously, the problem was with my phone line. Of course, I discovered this a bit late in the night to make a call. I decided to wait until the next morning at the office.
Yesterday, I braved the annoyance of the interactive voice response service that Verizon uses for their repair hotline. After waiting some time for the service to ask me some inane questions and ask if I could perform some tests myself, the service informed me that there was a problem with my line. No kidding?!?!? The earliest my appointment could be scheduled? 19 March 2008 What time will Verizon be out to repair my service? sometime between 8 AM and 5 PM Wow. Why not just tell me my scheduled appointment shall fall on the vernal equinox in the next Leap Year when my first born is named Rumplestiltskin?
So, next Wednesday, I will be working from home all day while waiting for the Verizon repair guy. I was tempted to call Comcast about getting their phone service hooked up, but I did not want to deal with the hassle of having to redo the outcall ability of my alarm system. Honestly, aside from an area-wide outage I had late on Sunday afternoon, my Comcast service has been pretty darn bulletproof. The outcome of this service appointment will dictate where my service money goes for home telecommunications service.
Avoiding the Pain of the Verizon Actiontec DSL Modem/Router
The Verizon Actiontec GT704WG Wireless Gateway pictured below is an incredibly engineered piece of FAIL.
If Verizon attempts to send you this for your DSL service, run away from this piece of hardware as fast as you can. There are two major problems I have with this hardware:
- it uses Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) for securing the wireless network;
- the key used on a WEP-secured wireless network is hexadecimal string of the letters A-F and the numbers 0-9; and
- did I mention it uses WEP?
Resetting the router to its factory defaults is pretty easy, but I had the hardest problem getting devices connected to the gateway to connect to the Internet. The gateway would easily connect once it was configured with the correct Verizon account information, but the devices connected wirelessly were stuck in an endless loop of having to activate the DSL service. Essentially, the laptop I was connecting would continually be prompted to download software it neither needed nor could use. I also did not need to activate the service since it has been active for some time, and I had no need for account setup.
I was able to find a resource via Google that walked through how to avoid this problem with machines that ran neither Windows nor OS X. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Ben’s Drivel. Here are the directions on how to get out of this stupid loop.
- Ensure your laptop is connected to the gateway.
- Open an Internet browser, and enter the following address into the address bar:
http://192.168.1.1/verizon/redirect
- You should be prompted to enter the administrative username and password for your gateway. Enter those credentials.
- A new page should appear with a button that says ON. It should also have some verbiage concerning its redirection.
- Click on the ON button, and it should change to OFF. Save this setting.
- Using your Internet browser, surf to Google.com. It should now load without the annoying “Activate DSL” site appearing. Enjoy the Internets!
Hopefully, these instructions will come in handy for someone in the future.
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