If you have a Verizon contract, you may be interested to know what has recently transpired in this birds nest. I have been getting phone calls and texts from Verizon, telling me that Mama Bird owes them lots of money. She hasn't been getting the calls, I have. And the person I spoke to wanted me to give them Mama Birds credit card number! As if I would a) have the credit card number and b) give it to ANYONE! As it appears, someone hacked her contract. Someone changed her shipping and billing address and then ordered a blackberry. The blackberry was shipped but never activated. That happened in November. Whoever did this did it via phone. To do this they had to know her account number, and her social. When Mama Bird tried to clear this up (via phone) she was told that she had to come in and show proof of identity, keep in mind whoever did all the changing did it via phone. This was a few days ago when it was FREAKING cold outside. And this little trip to the Verizon store took two hours. And nothing could be done until yesterday because the fraud department was closed for the weekend. Now, the blackberry has been blocked and can never be activated because Verizon did something using the blackberry's serial numbers. BUT the fact remains that the contract itself is not all that safe. My step father's contract and mine are just about up, for us to transfer to a different carrier will cost us nothing. For Mama Bird however, they want to charge her $155 to get out of her contract.
Mama Bird did some research and got the address to which the blackberry was sent. IT'S A VACANT LOT. So if the blackberry did get sent, who received it? And why didn't they activate it in NOVEMBER? We think it's an inside job. They would have access to her info and could do this fairly easily.
Verizon should let her end her contract WITHOUT incurring a fee, since this is an error on their part. We haven't heard back from the fraud department yet. They say it will take at least two weeks to clear up. This is unacceptable. At best we expect to not have to pay for the blackberry and any late fees having to do with unpaid bills, as we never got the damned bills BECAUSE SOMEONE CHANGED THE BILLING ADDRESS!
Needless to say, Mama Bird has been a little upset lately.
On a lighter note, Mama Bird, my stepfather and myself had my birthday dinner this past Sunday evening. We had spicy southwest steak tar-tare, a great big southwest style salad, guacamole and chips. It was delicious! I was given an apron from a restaurant in Santa Fe, Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and another cookbook titled "How to Cook Everything". That last book has 2,000 recipes in it. I think I'll be set for some time now!
--Little Bird is going to be cooking up a storm
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8 comments:
I think someone either hack Verizon records or you mom got here email, computer hacked. All someone would need would be the password to her account and they could pretty much do what ever they wanted.
Verizon is known for their poor customer support. I changed my contract with them, when my wife and I started dating. I put us both on the same family plan, because it was $30 cheaper. After a couple on months I got a $40 over charge for going over my minutes. I only talk to my wife during that time, which is supposed to be free because A) their INcalling and B) we are on the same plan. Anyway after trying to explain it to 2 representatives over the phone and getting nowhere I sent an email to customer support. After a day someone finally got back to me about the problem. They had not enabled INcalling on my phone; it was on my wife’s phone but not mine even though we were under the same family plan. How does that work??
Hmm, with Verizon is supposed to have free calling to any other Verizion phone! I have no idea how that happened. If Mama Bird's e-mail got hacked, why isn't everything else screwy? Just the phone.
I still think this was an inside job. They charged the phone to her account, but planned to skim the money somehow.
Good point, but you would think if it was an inside job they would have realized that the phone would be permanently locked. Plus people tend to notice a 300 dollar charge so they knew that it probably could not be traced back to them. Maybe the info they needed for the phone account was the only thing they were able to get. I don’t really know and I am just speculating I really don’t have much experience with this sort of thing.
You don't usually find out about a $300 charge when they change your shipping and billing address until it's too late. And by then, maybe they work elsewhere. I don't know. But I DO know that we need to switch carriers. ASAP.
Changing carriers is the best you can do, although often enough it's stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to carriers. What's really concerning me right now, is that Verizon bothers you with problems your mothers account has. If it's 2 totally separate contracts, only connected by name and adress or city they don't have any right to bother you at all. A large IT magazine recently featured a similar story concerning Ebay and Ebay got quite a bit of backlash for it. A son/daughters account was suspended by Ebay because of missing payments from the totally different parents account. It was compared to "Sippenhaft", look it up on The Wiki.
Carriers in general should beef up their security, account number and social aren't exactly secure as far as I know, with a bit of digging anyone can get them. My carrier for example asks for a password everytime a change per telephone is made, this password was chosen by me in the first place.
On the other hand, if I make calls for my mother to their carrier it's scaringly easy to convince them that I'm related to her.
Myself, I had trouble with carriers/telcos a lot 5-7 years ago since I moved 4 times then. Sometimes rather nightmarish. Crowning moment was not related to communication but instead I got accused of ordering stuff to one of my old addresses and not paying, fortunately that was quickly sorted out, but it still costs time and patience.
I should have been more clear. We are all part of a family plan. BUT, Mama Bird had her purse stolen over the summer. (No, this is not the cause of the phone mishap, none of the pertinent info was IN her purse) Anyway she had to get a new phone and they informed her that she would need a whole new contract to get it. It's sort of an add-on to our current program. It's a freaking huge mess and very little of it makes sense. At this point, we just want the headache behind us.
My bad, I was guessing instead of asking for further details.
After reading all of this, I am happier then ever that I don't own a cell phone.
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