Trade in adjustment error
Long-time Verizon customer here, at my breaking point and hoping for advice.
Back in March, I traded in an iPhone 15 Pro in-store while restructuring my account. Apparently a system glitch caused two duplicate orders to be created for that single trade-in, and I got credited $1,130 instead of the correct $830 promo amount. Fine — mistakes happen. The problem is what happened next:
• On June 29th, Verizon’s “Revenue Assurance” team quietly reversed the extra $300 directly on my bill, with zero notice, no email, no heads up — I only found out because I happened to see the charge.
• When I pushed back in their live chat (which is AI-run, not a human), the “agent” straight up admitted it was their internal system error, admitted it was never communicated to me, and only then logged a formal dispute (#VZW-DISP-9499299624) after I explicitly said I needed it in writing.
• I was told an email confirmation would arrive in 3-5 hours. Still waiting to see if that actually happens.
So essentially: their system messed up a trade-in credit, they let it sit on my account for three months, then silently charged me $300 to fix their own mistake without any proactive communication, and I only got acknowledgment of the error by escalating myself.
I’ve been a loyal customer for a while and this is honestly making me want to leave. A few questions for anyone who’s dealt with something similar:
1. Is there any way to actually get this $300 waived given it was 100% their error and lack of disclosure, or is a “dispute reference number” from chat basically meaningless?
2. Has anyone had luck with the FCC complaint process or state attorney general for stuff like this?
3. If I do want to leave, what’s the smartest way to do it without eating early termination / device payoff penalties given the circumstances?
Appreciate any advice — feeling pretty done with Verizon’s customer service at this point.