Another verizon horror story, that figures. Cant say id ever go back to verizon though. Theres obvisously a reason all of my friends are on att/sprint.

Anyone else having an issue with Verizon sending your account to a bill collections company called IC System Inc.? My wife, who switched her service to Credo, is being shook down for $18.98 for a former Verizon account, so even without any service they are still trying to extract payment.

@KreativeHitman13: Just switched all my phone and Internet services to Cox Communications. Verizon is the devil.

We've used the Verizon One Bill for wireless/land-line/tv/internet for over six months now, with no problem. We've been Verizion Wireless customers for several years now and once some minor billing kinks were worked out we've not had any problems. That includes moving to two different states and transferring our service. Guess we are lucky!

I ordered One Bill so I could drop my DSL from $43 to $30 a month...that was 7 months ago and they still have not done it. I have even called and asked for it a second time and supposedly they will do it, but it still hasn't happened.

Guess I'll just have to continue to overpay

Yeah they did the same thing to my account. Although it was for about 100 bucks, which has now ballooned to 800 bucks hah. Long story short... i was with them, had me and my mom on account. The iphone came out. I got one. Told my mom we were moving to att. had a few months left til contract was up so we cancelled all of the features on our phones and paid the minimum. Went to cancel and they said we couldnt because my moms phone changed contract when we changed her plan. I asked if it was the same for me then since i did the same. Couldnt explain that. I told them i got an iphone and dont want their service anymore. Contracts were up, even the upgrade feature was still on the accounts. They wouldnt budge. I told them we are not going to be using them anymore. They let us port the numbers to att, but continued to charge us and adding shit onto some 400 dollar etf. After talking to them numerous times they "couldnt" remove the fees. havent talked to them in months... still get bills. Im done with Verizon 4 evar. hah.

I had endless problems with One-Bill when we had Verizon. They would periodically forget to bill for one or more of the services they provided, and then they'd double-up the next month. They also stopped sending me E-bills for several months. When I called to yell at them about it, they fixed it, but then two months later they stopped sending them again. And then they started sending me bills I'd already paid. They also randomly sent me someone else's E-bill - different phone number, different name, different account number (same state, though). (That one absolutely floored me, as did their response when I called to inform them of it: "Well, we'll just submit a trouble ticket, ma'am" in the most bored, condescending voice you can imagine.)

And then it took them 3 weeks (!!) to submit a ticket to cancel our services.

Ooh, I'm getting mad just thinking about all the time I wasted on the phone with Verizon before we got smart and ditched them...

On a related note...

Year's ago when I had GTE local service and MCI long distance (ah, remember those days), they offered to send me one bill for both services. Sounded good at the time, but ...

1) On the first month, they both billed me for the MCI LD. It took weeks to straighten out.

2) 3 years later, they started charging me $3 for the privilege of 'all-in-one' billing -- which, with auto bill pay, I didn't notice for about 6 months.

Take away: watch out for a 'One Bill' fee in the future.

After switching to One Bill I spent a few hours on the phone trying to get things sorted out. They successfully linked my DSL and Wireless bills, but refuse to send me any sort of e-bill or other notification. The billing has been correct for the last eight months, so I guess that'll have to be good enough. I'll wait until they screw up my billing before spending another two hours on the phone.

Verizon's billing systems are a nightmare and their customer service systems aren't much better. Everything seems to have been designed back in the early 70's when there was one phone company to rule them all. You want to order FIOS TV? "Please enter your 10 digit Verizon telephone number". You want to get tech support for the cable cards in your TiVo? "Please enter your 10 digit Verizon telephone number."

God help you if you use an upstart local phone company.

Yep, Verizon One Bill sucks. What a huge nightmare. I did it to get a discount, and that was a huge mistake. I eventually did get the discount but here's something they don't actually tell you: If you have internet service from them, more often than not, instead of sending you a physical bill, they'll still simply charge it to the credit card they charged you on before you consolidated your account.

I was given a ton of bull about how they can't allow you to put in an account number (to control where the money is coming from) because internet-only means no physical bill (as in paper). And despite having online statements, the only way to pay is through credit card.

I had tons of problems getting One Bill setup with Verizon, too. In my case it seemed none of the reps were familiar with how to set it up with wireless and dry-loop DSL. It took many hours of phone calls to get things straightened out (and if I look at my online account status for the various services they're all out of whack -- thankfully auto-billing is working).

I found both the tag and picture for this article amusing.

I used to have Verizon before I switched to a T-Mobile Blackberry and had nothing but problems. I really wish that our cell phone technology wasn't lagging so far behind the rest of the 1st world countries that are on the leading edge, like Japan.

Maybe it's the DSL that screws things up. I've had my wireless and land line combined into billing for a long time and have had no issues. In fact, I split the bill once to get a company discount on wireless, then combined them again, no problem.

Eh! At least they didn't burn your house down.

I can vouch for not signing up for the OneBill service. As a former Verizon Wireless employee, I would highly recommend against it seeing how many headaches it caused, on both sides (for customer service and for the customer).

Oh please, it took over 15 MONTHS to get my onebill discount with verizon with the DSL, Homephone and Cell. What made it ROCK was that by the time they got it straight they killed the cell part of the 'triple play'. So it shot up suddenly.

Fast forward to July 2009. I have 3 charges from dsl for starz online, some online backup and a 'games service'. I did not order them nor do I need them. They have been unable to get them off my bill since FEBRUARY 2009!!! The DSL department is in India and the home bill is here in the US. They play off of each other. The DSL swears they credited my account. Nope I still have late fees on the charge I didnt authorize. Its great roughly 30$ that just sits there and no-one can kill it.

They are a huge pain but there isnt a real option. Cable (Comcast) is horrific and there just isnt a better cellular provider.

AT&T's combined billing was similarly horrendous. If you call Wireless, they'd refer you to landline. You call landline, they'd refer you to wireless. It was an absolute nightmare.

What was inanely odd, is that both departments would show as paid, even if the bill was not.

@RandaPanda: Doh! That should be "insanely" not "inanely". proofreading ftw...

I currently pay $43 a month for DSL, new customers get the same service for $30 now. I have actually considered quitting DSL for a few days and then getting it again so I can be considered a "new" customer. Is that possible with Verizon, or is the risk of losing my DSL line at the switching office too great?

Even at $43 it's still cheaper than Comcast Internet, but it would be nice to be able to save a buck or two.

I've seen signs posted up and down the biggest road in town (Veterans Parkway in Bloomington) that say "Got Verizon One-Bill? Call:" followed by the number for a local lawyer. I guess it's actually bad enough that some schiester is trying to set up some class-action against them.

I also love when they ask you your account number and tell them you don't know because you have never been sent a bill. There's an endless circle of hell.

I signed up for Fios when I bought my house a year ago and I bundled my wireless with my internet service to get a discount. The only problem was that since I didn't have a landline, they could not send me a monthly bill, even though I had gotten one from them for the past 7 years on my wireless account and had never had an issue. And then it took them 8 months so that I can actually view my OneBill online.

Ahh, yes. A service rep from Verizon told me I could sign up for one bill for landline & wireless as long as the balance on both accounts was zero--I assumed this meant that I wasn't behind on either account. I said both accounts were paid in full. The rep said she couldn't consolidate the accounts unless I owed zero, that is, I'd just made a payment. Since the two accounts had different due dates, I could NEVER consolidate the accounts, even if I'd just made a payment, because I'd always owe something on the bill that wasn't yet due. I'm still scratching my head over that one...I think I had a rep who didn't feel like doing any work. (I canceled the landline and went with a VOIP service!)

@heltoupee:

You should absolutely go take a picture of that and send it in here. Verizon's billing system is criminal and needs as much attention to how fucking terrible it is.

Kick it to the top. EECB and prepare to take it to the state PUC too.

Yeah, they seem to use the landline as a unique ID for your account. We wanted to sign up for one bill, but since we don't use a landline at all they said it was impossible (and a cell phone wasn't valid).

I don't have onebill but I did want to consolidate my cell phone bills and my data card bill and kept getting the runaround. As a former Alltel customer, not by choice I will add, I was tired of Verizon's crap so I called executive customer service and the guy I talked to fixed my issue immediately and gave me his direct line. Anyways he asked me where I got the number for executive customer support and I told him Consumerist.com and he was all too happy to help me and told me if I needed anything else to call him back. Moral of the story is to call executive customer support and they will be more than happy to help you I'm sure. I don't remember the number but do a search for Verizon, consumerist.com and eecb on google and it will pop up.

@NeonNoodle: Verizon Wireless went after me for an invalid ETF as well. After months of fighting with them, I told them to piss off. I have 1 more month before that is off my otherwise pristine credit report.

I have been very happy with Verizon service over the years but this ONE BILL service is a very bad joke! The exact same thing happened to me a few years ago and it took months to straighten out. I switched to another carrier for my landline back then but where I live now, there are no other viable options. I'm back to ONE BILL now but will be moving soon. I'm dreading the nightmare I'm going to be confronting when that happens!

Ah... I have to jump in here.. sounds like my story. I've been on the phone with Verizon for almost 4 1/2 hours in June and July. FIOS finally go here in May, so I got it, I'm happy with it, but now I can't pay for it. I was supposed to have a single bill landline and internet, but it didn't happen, I get two bills, I call, thy promise it will be fixed, again I get two bills, call again, they promise it will be fixed and still it's not. I've been a verizon phone and DSL customer for the six years happily with no problems, I switched to FIOS and now everything is screwed up. The last time I called, they told me they had NO RECORD of the 1 1/2 hours I spent on the phone with them the previous time before. I was forwarded to a supervisor who promised she'd take care of it then call m back in one week to verify everything was ok, never got a phone call of course. For the last however many years I've paid my bill online, but now I can't, I can't even pay it though the billing department, they say my account doesn't exist! I can however pay it through their automated system that charges my $3.50 per transaction... it's a joke, all of it.... I'm sick of them promising and never going through with it..

I have this one-bill and thankfully have had no problems with it, by my sister sure did. She had some disputed charges on her cell phone bill and was working with Verizon on that....but apparently the one-bill people didn't know/didn't care. All they could see is that there was an amount owing, and therefore, they cut off her home phone. Needless to say, she wasn't thrilled and stopped the consolidated billing. Way to go, Verizon.

I feel bad for feeling vindicated on this, but I do second the circle of hell comment. I also tried to contest some charges to one of the wireless accounts linked to my home phone via One Bill, and went through countless iterations of calling Verizon home, being told that I had to call Verizon wireless, and then being told by Verizon wireless that One Bill was handled by a third party and that I would have to call them, only to be given a number that went to internal VW or VH, never to this zombie, third-party One-Bill-managing company. I finally said good riddance to bad rubbish and paid ETF's for our two wireless lines just to be done with the whole thing.

I wrote in here about a very similar problem with Verizon OneBill over a year ago and for whatever reason it never got posted. My saga took me over 5 months to resolve and only was eventually resolved by complaining my way up the supervisor tree. I wish you luck!