I’ve been going through a series of muddled mess with Verizon Wireless over the last couple months and today I decided it’s getting old. The problem? I can’t pay my bill online.
It all started three months ago when I purchased a second broadband device for my Tablet PC. I’m a heavy Internet user and two devices make sense for the way I work. I knew from the get go that Verizon isn’t set up for users like me, but I took a deep breath and figured it would all work out, though maybe more expensive that in ought to be. But that’s the price you often have to pay when you’re on the technology edge.
Anyway, I purchased the second device and went on my merry way, paying my bill online as always. A little over a month later I got a call from Verizon that my account was overdue. Seemed odd at first because I always paid online. And when they asked for a credit card over the phone I began to wonder if this was all a scam. After all, they called me, I didn’t call them. It took me a few minutes to realize that the real problem was that the bill was for the new device, which Verizon didn’t automatically add to my existing account–even though I bought it all online while signed in under my account.
After several calls and callbacks and failed attempts to merge my two accounts, reps from Verizon finally called me to tell me that everything was set up and the two accounts were merged. I went on my merry way.
Then a month later I tried to pay my bill online. It didn’t work. It said my account information wasn’t available and try again later. I waited a couple days and tried again. Same message. I called Verizon. They scratched their head and told me that the problem was that I didn’t owe anything and to wait a couple weeks until the next billing cycle. So I did.
After a couple weeks I tried again. Still didn’t work. A couple more days of waiting and I realized there was something wrong. Another call. This time I was told that my old account had been closed. Would have been nice if the website had told me that rather than “try again later.” The rep told me to create a new account under the new number because the two accounts had been merged under it and the old account had been closed.
So I then tried to register the new number and the registration page kept silently failing and popping me back to the landing page. Another call. This time the Verizon rep figured out that it was because I was using Safari and it was a known bug. Whew. So I switched computers (no way I was going to try the IE8 beta I had on that machine!) and used IE. The registration worked and a confirmation email notification popped up and from it I was told I could get my temporary password. So I hung up the phone. Ooops. The email just says that the temporary password will be text messaged to me. But, ugh, these are broadband devices. So I called back. They said, “no problem, go into the vzaccess software and…”—-uh, oh, I interrupted. I don’t use that software. It too clumsy on a Tablet PC and I need another boot up process like I need another IE toolbar. I use Vista’s DUN (which is also clumsy, but that’s another story.) No problem, they have a solution for that. They’ll mail me the password via USPS.
I’m beginning to scratch my head at this point. Is it really any more secure to do what they are doing than to send a timed out, encoded link in the original email that takes me back to their site where I can enter a password???? I’m realizing the problem by now. I don’t think the way the designers of the Verizon’s wireless service thinks. And I don’t think that most other commercial sites would either.
So I started to tell the rep I was talking to how I could now see what had been going on–that at each step along the way there were Verizon processes that were messing things up. I just wanted to pay my bill. So I explained would they just make a note of what was going on and review their processes? And then I heard some laughing. And that did it. The rep was not interested in hearing my suggestions. So I said goodbye and hung up. She told me to call another number anyway to pay over the phone. I was beginning to get annoyed. Actually, I went over the top when I got thrown into a maze of “push this” and “push that” instructions on the phone. I gave up and pressed “0.” I needed a human. I paid my bill (which was now late as I had expected) over the phone pondering in my mind if all of this was really more secure than this or that.
Ah, the fun of it. We’ve all been there. No biggy, just annoying.
But just think of the messes that are going to occur as broadband wireless gets more prevalent. The wireless companies are too cell phone centric and not net-savvy enough. My guess is they will be when all is said and done.