Homefusion - Salespeople not trained on data use

[thekidsall]

I'm on a share everything plan with multiple family members.

We have 3 smart phones, 1 tablet, and 2 dumb phones. and were able to share 8GB data with no issues (it may have been even lower than that)

Recently the owner of the plan was talked into switching from her existing ISP to Verizon's Home Fusion Service, and adding this service to our data pool.  (Had I known this was happening, I would have talked her out of it immediately.. or at least explained what this meant)

She is NOT tech savy (and I'm sure many Verizon customers are in this boat), so she asked your salespeople MANY questions about the service, and was excited about getting better/cheaper/more reliable internet, and finally getting rid of her land line.

Instead, your salespeople provided FALSE information, and failed to inform her of approximately how much data this many devices would use (They left the data at less than 10GB for this many devices, and told her that this would be PLENTY).   She told the salespeople that she streams netflix. They told her that it would be FINE as long as she only watched them from her laptop.  What they failed to tell her is, "10 GB of data isn't really enough to allow you to stream more than 10-15 shows/movies on netflix each MONTH.  You could quickly run out of data, so perhaps we should start out with a larger data plan, and then reduce it if we see that you aren't using as much as you had thought).   Nor did they tell her that 10GB of data at home isn't really that much (she's not tech savy)

I wasn't aware of the changes to our plan or the impact it would have, until we were in Door County, WI.   This area has extremely limited cell phone coverage and zero chain stores (no Verizon stores).  We were on day 2 of our vacation when the first data alert was texted.  We had used 50% of our data, and we still had another 15 days to go.  (In the past, we only received the 50% usage texts when there was 1-2 days left of our billing cycle).

All of the smart phone users on the plan turned off our cellular data and used the hotel's wifi instead. NOBODY WAS AT HOME TO USE THE INTERNET.   Day 2: I received the text stating we had used 75% of our data.  An hour later it was 90%     I tried calling, but didn't have the account password on me.  The customer service rep told us we could fix it online.   We raced back to the hotel and I used a computer to log onto verizon's website and adjust the data plan before we went over.

I updated our data, and received a confirmation email that we were in the clear.  I looked at our data usage online after adding the extra data and we were fine, so I didn't worry about it again. I figured we had fixed the problem before overages had occurred, and we stopped receiving overage messages.

This was last month.

TODAY I find out that we DID indeed end up with overage charges.   Apparently we were supposed to somehow BACKDATE this data upgrade, or it didn't count (?!).  So although everything I saw on the internet looked good, and when the plan owner called a verizon customer service rep who told her, "those overage messages must have been a mistake, you were nowhere near going over"..  when it came time to bill us, we suddenly have an OVERAGE that was not there before.   In fact, it wasn't there when I LOOKED a couple of weeks ago when we started getting '50% usage' errors (and logged in to find out that we were fine, and had this fact confirmed by a customer service rep who said that these usage texts were going out in error.. and others had reported them too)

So now we have to pay overage fees, because of misinformation from your sales staff and customer service reps.

Do NOT add Home Fusion to your shared data plan.

Get a CLEAR idea of your existing home internet usage before committing to this service, and get more data than you need until you know what you actually use. 

Do NOT listen to their salespeople who try to convince you to get LESS data (hey look at those amazingly high overage fees), and monitor your service closely.  

It's actually cheaper to CANCEL this service and pay the early termination fee.  

And what exactly does this mean?

"New customers to the service will receive 50% more data allowance for their first 2 full billing cycles. Requires new 2-year activation. Overage is billed at $10 for each additional 1GB. 50% more data not available on Share Everything plan."

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Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator Duplicate thread started - text added to original post

[vzw_customer_support]

Dealing with overages is not how we want any of our customers to enjoy service with us thkidsall. We certainly do not want to lose you. We want all our customers to know they can check data usage at any time by dialing #data on their phones or via My-Verizon online. Yes, streaming, downloading, uploading, games, and apps can all use data. If the person is constantly streaming, data can be used very quickly. This information is also on our website. I would love to know what misinformation you were given, so we can correct this information. The owner of the account signed and agreed to the new plan. They can definitely wait in the future to have another person from the account to join them when choosing a plan and device so they can pick the correct options for your needs. Plus, the data package we recommend is just an estimate of data and we suggest the plan that may be best but also give you the opportunity to change plans at any time to prevent overages. We also provide great advice to help manage data, for instance using wifi, not streaming all day, and closing apps or programs that may use data. Additionally, your phones all have the opportunity to use wifi when available to prevent data usage. In regards to the changes online, we ensure that customers have a clear understanding of future dating, backdate, and on demand. I'm sorry you made the choice to change your data plan on demand and it incurred overages. Were you provided any help with the plan changes and bill? Please let us know if you have any furhter questions.

Kinquana_VZW
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