Cancelling Frontier FiOS

[ronin]

Due to a recent move, I had to cancel my service and entered Frontier's cancellation hell.

Immediately, I was charged for the next month's service although I wasn't on any kind of contract. Ignorantly, I hadn't cancelled autopay before the end of service so they took the payment for services unrendered. I spent a few hours on the phone with customer service and was advised a couple of times by different reps that the charge was being credited. It never was and no one could explain why or why not so I filed a dispute with my credit card company. After a few months, it was resolved in my favor (I believe Frontier never responded to the cc company's inquiry).

Then, I was billed again the next month. Fortunately, I had by now cancelled autopay. So, I entered customer service purgatory and went through it all again and sure enough got the same result, more or less. Finally, I got the nasty letter saying that it was going to collection and my credit score could be negatively affected.

Somewhere along the line, something that one of the service agents did resulted in a new charge for somewhat less than a full month of service and a credit for the same amount. But the other month's bill remained. After being told it was going to be removed, then it wasn't, then it was a mystery... I ended up paying the #^@ thing just to end it all.

End of story, not! Frontier never sent the shipping label and box to return the equipment as they promised when I cancelled the service, now a couple of months down the line. Guess what, I now owe $231 for unreturned equipment. So back on the horn to those helpful folks at customer disservice and requested the label and box again. Never came.

New letter with the same threat. Back on the phone. Finally got the shipping label. Box was 2 sizes too small to ship anything. Worthless. Boxed it in my own box. Dropped it off at UPS.

End of story? No, now they are claiming that they never received it. Repeat of all the above. Hours spent, bottom line, it is my responsibility to prove that I sent it. I didn't get a receipt from UPS. So I have no proof. Pull out last of hair.

Now as it happens, my wife has a nephew who works for Frontier, business side not residential, but is high enough up to get things done on occasion. Turn it over to him. Next day, sure enough the person in charge of whatever (screwing the customer?) verifies that I did return the equipment. I will be credited for the charge (it isn't taken off, I get to wait 1 or 2 business cycles for the credit to show up). Can you get collections off my back in the meantime? He contacts the person in charge of that. Sure, here's 30 days grace period. So, what? Am I supposed to be grateful for that? You aren't going to try to screw me in the next month while I wait to see if you are still going to screw me? While I am grateful for our nephew trying to help, it remains to be seen how screwed up Frontier truly is.

Anyways, maybe in a couple of months, half a year or so from when I moved, I will be out from under the Frontier leeches. Or not.

 

[fidler4]

Sounds like par for the course when it comes to Frontier. I had my nightmares with them also right after they switched from Verizon to Frontier. Our local city council got involved because of all the complaints by their constituents against Frontiers service . I ended up emailing my local council person who forwarded my email to a VP at Frontier. Within an hour I received a call from some Frontier tech across the country who was able to remotely fix my problem.

There is a reason for this web site: www.frontier-sucks.com

 

[W2R]

Wow, that's terrible! And here I thought Cox Cable (essentially our only high speed internet here) was awful.

My $79.99/month mid speed internet service and F's $84.99/month slightly higher speed internet service were both completely, 100%, dead as a doornail for almost 48 hours earlier this week. No reason whatsoever, and no outage at businesses a couple of blocks away from our homes. Typical Cox.

 

[rdy2go]

I feel your pain! I had Verizon for my office lines when they were bought by Frontier. This was shortly before my retirement date, so I notified them that I wanted service discontinued on the last billing day of the period. I also told them to cancel my account and any access to their website. The service was discontinued as requested, but they sent a bill for $3.00 several months after the end of service. I called and asked them to waive it since I didn't owe it. In their eternal wisdom, they issued a credit for $4.00 and sent me a check for $1.00. Frontier's website and billing were the worst of any utility that I have ever had the displeasure to encounter. The lowest of the low.

 

[Montecfo]

I have a worse story than that. I was going to write a book.

 

[ronin]

The tease... let's hear it!

 

[iloveyoga]

My sister had good results reporting her cable TV issues to the FCC. The cable company fixed the issue that same day. It had been going on for two months.

 

[Walt34]

There is a reason I don't autopay anything....

 

[Dawg52]

Due to a recent move, I had to cancel my service and entered Frontier's cancellation hell.

Immediately, I was charged for the next month's service although I wasn't on any kind of contract. Ignorantly, I hadn't cancelled autopay before the end of service so they took the payment for services unrendered. I spent a few hours on the phone with customer service and was advised a couple of times by different reps that the charge was being credited. It never was and no one could explain why or why not so I filed a dispute with my credit card company. After a few months, it was resolved in my favor (I believe Frontier never responded to the cc company's inquiry).

Then, I was billed again the next month. Fortunately, I had by now cancelled autopay. So, I entered customer service purgatory and went through it all again and sure enough got the same result, more or less. Finally, I got the nasty letter saying that it was going to collection and my credit score could be negatively affected.

Somewhere along the line, something that one of the service agents did resulted in a new charge for somewhat less than a full month of service and a credit for the same amount. But the other month's bill remained. After being told it was going to be removed, then it wasn't, then it was a mystery... I ended up paying the #^@ thing just to end it all.

End of story, not! Frontier never sent the shipping label and box to return the equipment as they promised when I cancelled the service, now a couple of months down the line. Guess what, I now owe $231 for unreturned equipment. So back on the horn to those helpful folks at customer disservice and requested the label and box again. Never came.

New letter with the same threat. Back on the phone. Finally got the shipping label. Box was 2 sizes too small to ship anything. Worthless. Boxed it in my own box. Dropped it off at UPS.

End of story? No, now they are claiming that they never received it. Repeat of all the above. Hours spent, bottom line, it is my responsibility to prove that I sent it. I didn't get a receipt from UPS. So I have no proof. Pull out last of hair.

Now as it happens, my wife has a nephew who works for Frontier, business side not residential, but is high enough up to get things done on occasion. Turn it over to him. Next day, sure enough the person in charge of whatever (screwing the customer?) verifies that I did return the equipment. I will be credited for the charge (it isn't taken off, I get to wait 1 or 2 business cycles for the credit to show up). Can you get collections off my back in the meantime? He contacts the person in charge of that. Sure, here's 30 days grace period. So, what? Am I supposed to be grateful for that? You aren't going to try to screw me in the next month while I wait to see if you are still going to screw me? While I am grateful for our nephew trying to help, it remains to be seen how screwed up Frontier truly is.

Anyways, maybe in a couple of months, half a year or so from when I moved, I will be out from under the Frontier leeches. Or not.

I was just watching a Larry David episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Your bad luck would make a perfect script for his show.

 

[Curmudgeon]

No worries... with Net Neutrality gone, the increased investment and innovation in this sector will make troubles like this a thing of the past!

 

[ejman]

There is a reason I don't autopay anything....

Same here. Autopay sure looks easy peasy as long as all is well but when it doesn't...

 

[GrayHare]

I could use autopay and spend time and hair recovering money improperly sucked from my account, or I could push money to pay bills and spend only time. My scalp prefers the latter.

 

[Bir48die]

I was just watching a Larry David episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Your bad luck would make a perfect script for his show.

OMG! Do you even know how many times I have done this? I was waiting for him to pry it open only to then cut an artery and bleed to death.

 

[Curmudgeon]

He just needs one of these:

Good luck getting it open, though.

 

[Dawg52]

OMG! Do you even know how many times I have done this? I was waiting for him to pry it open only to then cut an artery and bleed to death.

I laughed my head off when I first saw the clip. That's me in a nutshell. I've actually stabbed myself.

 

[harley]

I could use autopay and spend time and hair recovering money improperly sucked from my account, or I could push money to pay bills and spend only time. My scalp prefers the latter.

Or you could use autopay, but cancel it before you get ready to cancel service. It's pretty much standard procedure for me.

 

[ronin]

Or you could use autopay, but cancel it before you get ready to cancel service. It's pretty much standard procedure for me.

That's a lesson I have taken away from this.

 

[Montecfo]

The tease... let's hear it!

Ok, Ronin, since you are the OP, I guess this is not a thread hijack.

this was Verizon Fios, but still worst customer service in the world.

I had Verizon phone service (the POTS line, copper) and wanted to switch to FIOS cable. So my wife signed us up for a bundle, video, phone and internet.

When the installer arrived, he explained what he was doing, and it became clear they were going to change the phone service to internet phone (over the cable line). I did not want this. The reason for keeping the phone line was security in event of disaster. We have found the copper line, which provides its own power, is more reliable in outages.

He said he could not change the order, but they could change it back once installed. That was easy to say, but almost impossible to do. And it exposed an entrenched bureaucracy of people who could not or would not help me. They really want to get rid of copper!

Long story short, I spoke to over 60 people (no typo) at Verizon over several months time. Of that 60+ probably 2 tried to help me. I began to ask names and tell them e.g. they were the 39th person i had spoken to. It became not just a source of frustration, but a bit of a challenge. What would i be told next? One said he was fixing my problem and instead changed me to another product which also included "FIOS phone" which I did not want. So then I had a sub-task of cancelling that.

There was so much dishonesty (i was told that FIOS phone is neither analog nor digital. I was also told that analog had been "discontinued"). These people appeared to have been trained to lie and attempt to discourage the customer. Otherwise how could they have been so consistently wrong?

I finally contacted the public utility commission and got a response-within a few days. And my analog copper line.

Bottom line: not an honest company.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I had my own issue with Time Warner Cable aka Time Warner Ripoff. They are one of the worst. I had quite a time cancelling their service. I do recognize these companies need to make a profit, however the prices they charge are highway robbery. They simply won't do anything in your favor unless they have to.

I hate the fact that these companies make you subscribe to a bundle of channels that you do not want just to watch the few you do watch. The companies themselves say the networks of the channels are to blame yet the cable and dish companies have had years to fix this but the problem only gets worse.

It seems to get any kind of a deal you have to threaten to cancel your service . About all I can do is keep an eye out for better deals that come along from my current provider as well as its competitors and be willing to act on it.

To give an idea of how bad I hated Time Warner I went with Verizon until I left California. Where I used to live they were my only choices.