Verizon Dismisses Man & Son's $18,000 Phone Bill

This article seems to be missing information that would help decide whether it was the consumers fault, or Verizon's 'small print' BS.

wonder what he was doing. porn?

Verizon dismissed it, end of story.
It can now be removed from the credit report.

I've read this article before, they had a free unlimited data plan offered to them when they signed up for the first two years. They had gotten so used to it that by the time the plan expired, they didnt realize it. So they racked up 18k in like a couple of weeks of net usage.

I dont care if it's the "consumers fault" in a situation like this, clearly nobody can pay a 18 thousand dollar bill for watching youtube on their cellphone. There needs to be some kind of statute that either cuts them off or automatically enrolls them into the unlimited data plan once they reach a certain point. Obviously it does not cost verizon 18k to provide the service, because they could have been enrolled in an unlimited data plan for the $90/month or whatever it costs.

I dont know why these cell phone companies insist on letting the bill scale to infinity, nobody is ever going to pay it. Sure some suckers will pay a $300 bill or something, but 18 thousand? And verizon would be happy to just let it go all the way up to 18 million? Are they just hoping one day steve jobs will forget to upgrade his plan and finally they have their money maker?

The reason for this is Verizon can't just go in and take it off the credit score. They are not in charge of that department I do think that there needs to be a cut off point. That would be easy to set up, when will phone companies get the point?

Who cares if it leaves a mark on their credit report.

When will people realize that credit scores are a form of slavery?

Pay cash and live within your means! Better yet bring back the barter system...

I think Steve Jobs is with ATT

What serious company is gonna look at a 9000 dollar credit mark from verizon and not lol in there face seriously thats ludicrous. I dont think any linder would take that as a sign of what kind of borrower you are and if they did maybe thats not the place you wanna borrow money from

You know, maybe it's just me, but at some point a company needs to realize that an auto-generated charge exceeding a few hundred dollars (in the case of a cellular service provider) is probably going to be balked at by the customer and not paid. Rather than attempting to collect a debt any reasonable person knows will never be paid, why don't they automatically generate a service call to the customer to let them know that whatever they are doing is racking up a helluva bill. They would probably appreciate it, and their chances of collecting go up considerably.

The thing about Verizon is that they are really good (at least with my account) at letting me know ahead of time that I am going over my minutes, txt messages, or whatever. Several times now, they have called me (with an english-fluent human) to tell me I am going over the plan and offering to upgrade me to the next tier of service, retroactively, so I don't see any overage fees. Maybe they don't do this for everyone, but personally I can't say a single bad thing about Verizon as far as customer service goes.

Maybe it's not the same where you are, but in the US if you want to use your credit the only thing lenders care about is your score. They let a computer program crunch every detail (including written off debt) and it spits out a risk score. This is what's used, and most of the time a human never even sees that score; the end user (the would-be customer in most cases) just sees an "Accepted" or "Rejected" status on their credit application.

So despite our ability LOL at this, no a lender will *not* ignore it just because it's from Verizon.

Normally a good Cell Company will call you and let you know you are over your limit, and ask you if you want to change your plan.

data plan is evil!

For general purpose living I agree, but it matters if you want to buy a house or a car. Everyone needs credit for that.

And cash sucks. Get a debit card. This isn't the twentieth century. If we can't have flying cars, we should at least have digital money.

$300 could be a stupid consumer mistake. $18000 for a few weeks of slow mobile internet access is extortion.

If that's the way you want to think of it then no one will stop you. There are those of us (like every single small business owner, every manager of a part of a larger company, and basically anyone with a rough understanding of modern finance) who realize that credit is a very valuable tool in today's world. Would it be nice if we could all do without it? Sure; it would also be nice if there were no such thing as war, and if we could just get the hang of productive fusion power.

Verizon PR bull crap.

Verizon didn't lose a dime. They sold his account to a collection agency and it is that agency that decided to write it off. Verizon likely made a few hundred to a few thousand dollar off this $9000 past due account depending on how much the collection agency paid.

BTW, this will show up as an $18,000 debt cancellation on his 1099 and he need to pay the tax on that. (IRS considers debt cancellation as income)

You are so right man... NEVER buy on credit. 1 exception, to gain points.... I place everything on credit and pay the bill as i use the card before the bill even comes to my door. Credit will destroy your life.

As for this article, I think there should be limitations as to what a person can receive for a single month’s bill. How about when you exceed what you are entitled to for data usage it cuts you the fuck off! Simple. How about a phone call... "Mr.Jones, are you aware your cell phone is approaching $500 this month?"
Why can any company get away with this, ESPECIALY a technology company. No one can tell me when you reach your 1gig data limit they can’t have an auto shutoff.

Hate to go off on a tangent, but FYI your credit building system (one which is shared by most people ignorant of how credit scoring works) is useless. You really think the credit bureau's arent aware of the difference between buying a pack of gum for 99 cents and making sustained monthly payments for $400 on a boat?

Every credit purchase is not treated as equal. What drives your score upward is the demonstration that you can responsibly handle a routine payment of some significance, like paying off a car loan, a mortgage, or any other loan that takes more than 3 months. Buying groceries on credit and then paying the bill online as soon as you get home does nothing for your credit score.

While you are very correct about the credit value of a consistent, monthly payment versus putting your minimal purchases on a credit card and then immediately paying them off, there are many more factors that go into your credit rating: numbers of lines of revolving credit, balances on lines of credit relative to the credit limit, income to debt ratio, amounts of unsecured debt versus secured debt, etc.

It's pretty damn convoluted and I don't pretend to understand it all. But suffice it to say that it certainly won't hurt to do the buy-it-with-a-CC-and-then-immediately-pay-it-off thing. It's a good way to get started until you buy your first car, or something of that nature.

But at one time, there was like a 5GB limit on the "unlimited" plan. Ironic I know.

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"HotRoderX :

What serious company is gonna look at a 9000 dollar credit mark from verizon and not lol in there face seriously thats ludicrous. I dont think any linder would take that as a sign of what kind of borrower you are and if they did maybe thats not the place you wanna borrow money from





Maybe it's not the same where you are, but in the US if you want to use your credit the only thing lenders care about is your score. They let a computer program crunch every detail (including written off debt) and it spits out a risk score. This is what's used, and most of the time a human never even sees that score; the end user (the would-be customer in most cases) just sees an "Accepted" or "Rejected" status on their credit application.

So despite our ability LOL at this, no a lender will *not* ignore it just because it's from Verizon."
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And that is why the US is run by complete morons.

The remaining impact is that, if Verizon reports this as a charged-off account to the IRS, that poor guy will have to pay income taxes on it.

I once bought a cell phone with a limited minutes plan and unlimited minutes after 6pm. After talking for a month after 6pm, I found out it was actually 8pm and the salesman messed up. I got hit with a $350 phone bill.

I called the company and they blew it off saying I'd have to pay. When I spoke to a Supervisor, she happily applied the next tier plan that covered my calls and applied it retroactively so I ended up with a $50 bill from then on. (It was supposed to be $35 per month).

Why wouldn't Verizon just retroactively apply a data plan to this account and solve it that way? Then the customer is happy and they don't get a bad news story like this, AND they actually get paid. These people probably did not pay one cent.

LOL ifevery oen in this country actually lvied with in thier means , 2/3rds of all entertainment companies might have to file bankrupcy with in 6 months LOL but yeah i totallya gree 2with you we are in teh economic hole we are because so few people actulaly live with in thier means.

I disagree with many here.

I believe that it is the consumer's fault for racking up that much in costs. Whether or not it cost Verizon that much to service them, should not matter - they are a for-profit corporation. Not carefully reading the contract was their fault.

Perhaps it's just a different mobile culture in the US. I constantly have to keep an eye on my mobile usage in Canada because we are ripped off horribly when we go over.

this is just ridiculous.

I live in Canada as well and while I agree with you to some extent, there should also be a finite value assigned to such a service. The actual costs are minimal. There is absolutely no way it cost them $18,000 to provide the service for 2 weeks, especially if they normally charge say $90 a month. Like I said in my previous post, Verizon should simply retroactively apply a data plan to the account to bring it down closer to what it actually cost them to provide it, which is their normal charge.

why do they even bother running this up? Just forcibly add the price of the data plan to the bill for the month when data is used once it hits the price of said data plan in usage. Fact is, for bout 45 to a maximum of 90 a month the data plan could have been added. 18K?
Nigga please.

It doesn't matter to much, the black mark on his credit score will be gone 7 years from the date that it was sold to the debt collectors. The debt it's self would have been gone 6 and a half years after the last date he made a payment on the account.