Ex-Verizon customer has a cautionary tale for anyone planning to leave
Former Verizon customer says they kept getting charged even after canceling service.
Carriers offer a feature called AutoPay to customers that lets them set up automatic payments for their monthly bills. This not only ensures that bills are paid on time but almost all carriers give discounts to customers for using AutoPay. The feature mostly works as intended, but sometimes, you might regret setting it up, as one Verizon customer has found.
A Verizon customer who left the company and switched their numbers over to another provider in October claims that AutoPay continued withdrawing payments for three months. The customer was expecting a final bill from Verizon after porting out or transferring their numbers but all they got was a $127 charge each month for three months after canceling service.
PandasLOL took to Reddit to vent their frustration. Apparently, they forgot to cancel AutoPay before ditching Verizon, which might be they continued to be charged. However, if you notified a carrier that you were leaving, you wouldn't expect to keep getting charged for service.
PandasLOL says that they had no outstanding balance and everything had been paid in full. They also had no watches or tablets on their plan.
They tried to log in to their terminated account to sort the issue out but couldn't access it. As a last resort, they went to their bank with proof showing they owed Verizon nothing and were refunded the money.
This backfired, with Verizon treating the unpaid balance as debt, leaving the former user no choice but to not fight the collections claim as they didn't want damage to their credit report.
While Verizon may not necessarily be in the wrong here, the carrier should have provided invoices to help the customer make sense of the charges. Instead, the company took a step that would reflect badly on the customer's credit history.
We've reached out to Verizon for a comment and will update the story when we have a response
I ported out all my numbers in October of 2024. Afterwards I expected a prorated bill or final bill of some sort. Never received that, but noticed for 3 months Verizon was charging me $127 a month for an account with no active numbers or device payments.
Verizon wins this one, as I can’t spend the time disputing this while taking the hit on my credit report.
I finally decided to file a dispute with my bank, showed them proof of no device payments, and the dates I ported out and the last bill. They ruled in my favor and refunded me the money.
Now Verizon has the gall to send me to collections.
—PandasLOL, Reddit user, May 2025
When they asked Verizon for clarity on the charges, they were only given a paper bill that termed them as final charges.
PandasLOL says that they had no outstanding balance and everything had been paid in full. They also had no watches or tablets on their plan.
When I pressed customer service about these charges they couldn’t be helpful and all the paper bill said was “final charges.” My accounts were all paid in full when I ported out both my phone numbers, had no smart watches or tablets, or device payment.
—PandasLOL, Reddit user, May 2025
This backfired, with Verizon treating the unpaid balance as debt, leaving the former user no choice but to not fight the collections claim as they didn't want damage to their credit report.
While Verizon may not necessarily be in the wrong here, the carrier should have provided invoices to help the customer make sense of the charges. Instead, the company took a step that would reflect badly on the customer's credit history.
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