Don’t you just hate it when someone pays your phone bill instead of theirs by mistake? Such a mishap befell James, who noticed an $82 credit on his Verizon account that turned out to have come from someone who intended to pay their own bill.

He writes:

So, here’s a bit of a billing quandary for you. I have my Verizon Wireless account to automatically bill my bank every month, they pull their money every month like clockwork on the 12th. This month however it turns out that there was an additional $82 applied to my account, in cash. I didn’t make that payment though.

According to the Verizon rep I spoke to on the phone it looks like someone made an $82 cash payment at the Verizon Wireless store down the street from where I live, the same store my wife got her phone at, which is the only business we’ve done at that location. The verizon rep, and their supervisor, informed me that as the payment was done in cash there’s no way to reverse it.

My concern here is how to make sure this doesn’t come back to haunt me. As near as I can tell, someone in my town has attempted to make a payment on their phone, only to have it applied to my account instead. Not cool.

So I was wondering if you folks know who to get in touch with at Verizon to properly correct this billing error.

I’m going to drop by the store tomorrow and see if they know what’s up, but at this time I’m happy my phone bill is 50% off, but I’d rather make sure that the person who’s account that money was supposed to go towards, gets their due.

Kudos to James for not just taking the money and running and actually trying to help the person who mistakenly hooked him up. Hopefully Verizon corrects the ghost payment error.

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