RL isn’t arguing that his wife made a roaming call to a co-worker from a hotel in Venice, Italy. His dispute with Verizon wireless is regarding how long that call was. His wife says that it was ten minutes long. Verizon counters that it was ten hours and nine minutes. Considering that the call was to a voice mail box, that must have been an epic, almost close to the the actual meaning of the word “epic,” voicemail.

We began to wonder who cloned his phone, but the pattern of calls makes even less sense than that.

Verizon is charging us $602.91 for a one-minute call my wife made from Venice, Italy to a co-worker’s voice mail in Houston. Verizon claims the call lasted 10 hours and 9 minutes.

This call was made at 10:16 PM so, if it had truly connected to her co-worker, my wife would have had to stay up until 8:25 the next morning, talking on the phone while in a small hotel room with our son and me. Her co-worker worker would have had to be on the phone, in her office, until 2:25 AM, Houston time.

Verizon’s response is “there is nothing wrong with our billing system.” They failed to explain how my wife is supposed to have also made a call to someone we don’t even know who lives 60 miles from our home (I have spoken with the woman).

On the same bill, for our three numbers, there are at least five calls that they say were dialed from the same phone they were received on. There are several charges for checking voice mail, even though we received only one call that went to voice mail. (The call was from my sister, in Houston. We know no one in Europe who could have called us.)

If the phone hasn’t been cloned, something ain’t right at Verizon. Other readers have had success with contacting the office of the Region President for, well, their region. That guy or gal may be able to help sort this out.

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