Verizon Online under investigation for fraud, theft, corruption

Story by Ralph Metcalf

February 13, 2004

The Oregon Attorney General’s Office is investigating more than 400 complaints from Oregon businesses and residents. Verizon Online and Verizon Communications offers DSL service which, in many cases that relate to our investigation, work only about as well as conventional 56kbs modems, if at all. However, when dissatisfied customers voice their desire to cancel their DSL service, Verizon is refusing to allow customers to do so unless they walk through endless mazes and roadblocks in the guise of security.

We have discovered that what Verizon Online, aka, Verizon Internet Services Inc, calls security by insisting the customer fax any termination request (while it even then sits and is not acted upon) or give up an email address where Verizon will, if they get it right, email the customer a form upon which to terminate their account. That form itself is filled with confusion, errors, roadblocks and other problems and is not workable on a DSL line with major errors. The net result is an endless cycle of contempt by Verizon Online for their customers.

More than one customer who could not use their DSL connection at all, rendering their email useless, could not use email as a means to terminate and had no fax. Verizon then told these customers, “we can not and will not cancel your service.” Understand that Verizon had already confirmed the identity of the customer but still refused to act, for no other reason but to ignore the customer and milk a few more bucks from their account. In the long run, if the customer refuses to pay for services billed by Verizon Online, even after the customer has sent a certified letter to cancel the account, Verizon will then reap the reward of the account in arrears by ruining the customer’s credit and by using the unpaid bill to the customer as a tax deduction in the benefit of Verizon Online. This sort of contemptuous act is considered fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud and could have the CEO of Verizon Ivan Seidenberg arrested for criminal acts.

Our investigation indicates Verizon Online may be conspiring to defraud the public in an attempt to not only keep the customer once the customer discovers their DSL connection does not work or works so poorly that the net result is that the service is unusable. Attempts of customers to cancel the service are met with extremely creative ways to keep the customer from terminating the service. Our investigation involves hundreds of such cases where efforts to cancel was met with creative and non-contractual roadblocks by Verizon sales reps. Our sources suggest that Verizon has authorized this activity which comes from the highest levels of the company.

Customers have even sent registered letters or mailed their desire to Verizon to terminate their service along with their bill. In each case we investigated, Verizon Online ignored the customer and refused to terminate the account. The net result is that this practice equals theft on a grand scale.

Requests for supervisors by customers when calling Verizon customer support go unanswered. In fact, Verizon refuses to get a supervisor or manager involved, refuses to credit for loss of DSL service and deals with the customer in a hateful, mean spirited, angry and moronic way.

Verizon is involved in some of the most hideous practices imaginable. Once can only conclude they have absolutely no concern for their customer base. Verizon Online represents what is bad about the United States. We stand by our investigation and call for the immediate criminal incitements of all Verizon officers involved in this practice and deception.

One of our sources who works for Verizon Online tells us that there is a massive dissatisfaction among Verizon sales staff for being forced by Verizon to make promises most sales staff knows up front can never be met. According to our source the idea is to sell, sell, sell, regardless of what the customer wants. Verizon knows up front they can not deliver anywhere near the bandwidth they promise "... but we continue to sell empty promises. I really hate my job here at Verizon. I just hate it."

Another complaint alleges that Verizon Internet Services, Inc. promised to provide ultra high-speed internet access through digital subscriber lines ("DSL"). Verizon customers have experienced significant access disruptions and significant delays in obtaining technical service. The complaint alleges that Verizon was aware that it would be unable to provide DSL service as promised and knew that its customers would experience significant disruptions and significant delays in obtaining technical support.
Customers were put on hold for hours at a time when calling-in to the customer service line; and after experiencing significant problems and canceling service as a result, Verizon would block the lines and prevent another provider from providing Internet access to the customer.

" These calls substantiate the magnitude and severity of the problem with Verizon's DSL access service," stated Cohen Milstein partner Gary E. Mason. Indeed, Mason stated, "many of the commercial Verizon customers have reported significant disruptions to their businesses because of the problems with the Verizon service." Furthermore, noted Mason, "this underscores the need for this class action as a vehicle to not only compensate Verizon customers for poor service, but also to prevent Verizon from continuing to sell DSL internet access until these problems are resolved."

The net result of our investigation indicates not only is there serious question of Verizon stealing from the public and trying to hide it, but overcharging customers, trying to compete in the market with CEO’s who have no decent knowledge of the technology but have a hideous pendent for selling products they can not deliver, not necessarily just because of lunacy but because of a planned coordinated attack on the paying public.

Verizon repeatedly refused to answer our requests for comment on this subject. Our investigation will continue.