A Verizon customer has been trying to resolve a mistake made on their account for quite some time, with Verizon allegedly erroneously doing a huge chargeback for credits the user never received, to begin with.
Carrier promotions can be very attractive: they are good for the customer, as you can save money, and also good for carriers, as this attracts people to their service. However, there’s nothing exciting or inspiring when a promotion comes to bite you from behind. And that’s what one Verizon customer (and others) have experienced recently.
After trying multiple times to get a resolution to their problem (and getting promises that were never fulfilled) this one customer j4385556 took it to Reddit. Their case is, indeed, strange and frankly, even unsettling.
Apparently, a year and a half ago, the customer bought an iPhone 15 Pro Max through with Verizon trade-in promotion. They were paying for the phone for 18 months.
Then, all of a sudden, Verizon reportedly started doing a huge chargeback on a credit… of $1,422.63. The baffling thing: the customer says they never got such a credit for Verizon to be seeking a chargeback, and of course, as any person would do, they reached out to customer service.
Somehow, rather peculiarly, Verizon‘s system was reportedly showing they have received a $1,400 early bird promotion credit for the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Apparently, they qualified for it. It seems they didn’t know about it, and the discount wasn’t applied to their bill credits at all. But now, all of a sudden, a chargeback on this credit.
Upon talking to a Verizon customer support representative, the user was promised the situation would be fixed. The chargeback would be removed from their account, and on top of that, the early bird promotion would be applied. They say they were promised a resolution, but the deadline for it came and went.
I almost feel bad for the loyalty representative tying himself up in knots trying to explain how I received $1400 early bird promotion credit for the full value a iPhone 15 pro max back but somehow “haven’t been able to enjoy the benefits” of the credit and have been paying for the phone for 18 months.Now they are doing this huge chargeback on a credit that I never actually received.I was promised a resolution by yesterday. Just another failed promise in litany of failed promises and time sucking never ending promotion corrections.
-j4385556 on Reddit, March 2025
It seems some mishap has happened on Verizon‘s end, but their customer support representatives may be scrambling to fix it and haven’t been able to untie all the nods so far. Unfortunately, the sentiment among other Redditors is that there are quite a lot of problems with Verizon‘s customer support.
One Redditor says this:
Careful. Make sure you follow up with whoever “fixes” this for you. I had the exact same thing and after the fix one of my phones was reported unpaid and sent to collections and tanked my credit right when I was trying to buy a house.I’m still sore over that, lol.P.s. Verizon’s debt company sold the debt to another company later on and this all popped back up again. I’m typing on the “unpaid for” phone right now.
-ElmoDoes3D on Reddit, March 2025
If this anecdote is true, it is very unsettling indeed. ElmoDoes3D’s situation is frankly terrifying: to be unable to buy a house because of a weird Verizon mishap (allegedly)…
Judging by other Verizon users’ experiences, it seems the problem may be systemic:
Honestly – for a good 6 years of the 10 years I spent with Verizon – every single upgrade /discount/promo that we bit for my plan of 8 lines turned into multiple calls, emails, twice to executive customer service, to get them to honor the promotion. It’s the primary reason we left. Their website offers all kinds of things that their billing system either intentionally or by poor execution doesn’t catch, screws up, etcAnd no, this isn’t a plug for another carrier. But please know that the experience in the other grass is that the new carrier honored the promotions without me doing anything, now through multiple upgrades and new linesBy staying with Verizon, you’re teaching them they don’t have to change. For every customer who realizes they’ve been cheated out of a promotion, there is atleast one customer who never realizes it
-Jefefrey on Reddit, March 2025
If the situation doesn’t get resolved, customers in a similar predicament may end up having to pay more on their bills because of a Verizon chargeback. For an erroneous chargeback, quite possibly. If you’re facing a similar situation, you can do the following steps to ensure you are being treated properly:
- Ask for a detailed breakdown of how the credit was applied (or not applied) over the past 18 months
- Request a supervisor or higher-level resolution team to investigate and correct the issue
- If Verizon does not resolve it, consider filing a complaint with the FCC, as this often pushes companies to fix errors faster
Questions you may ask representatives in a scenario like this include:
- What was the original credit amount and how was it supposed to be applied?
- Where in my billing history was this credit given (or not given)?
- Why am I being charged back for something I never received?
- What is my total balance owed now, and why?
Unfortunately, it seems that multiple calls to representatives and supervisors would be required, and loads of headaches may be in too. Sometimes the only way to get them to fix things is to file with the FCC. Usually, people report that FCC involvement accelerates issue resolving. Hopefully, Verizon will fix this customer’s situation quickly.
We’ve reached out to Verizon for a comment and will update the story when we have a response.
