SOS helps make travel nightmares a little less scary

Five days after the start of Hanukkah, Maureen Sorensen let SOS know she was still hoping for her long-overdue Mother’s Day gift from Verizon.

With SOS playing a kind of not-so-secret Santa, the gift arrived mid-Kwanzaa, and she was able to celebrate New Year’s Day with the promise of more than $500.

Sorensen, a mother of two in Madison, wrote SOS on Dec. 27 to say that on May 13, 2018, she purchased an iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 8 and two iPhone SEs from Verizon — the first two as part of a buy-one-get-one free Mother’s Day deal that promised to waive a monthly fee on the iPhone 8.

As proof, she provided the email confirmation of her order from Verizon. It showed “monthly device payments” of $33.33 for the Plus, $10 for each of the SEs, and $0 for the iPhone 8.

“It was explained that we would receive a credit for the free phone and it would take two billing cycles for the credit to be applied,” she wrote. “I’ve never received the credit.”

Not that she didn’t try.

Sorensen said she “first contacted customer service via online chat on July 9, 2018, and was told the credit was going to be applied (on her) next bill. Then I contacted customer service again in September and was told an ‘escalation form’ was being sent and that it would take two billing cycles for credits to be applied. Then in January 2019 ….”

Well, readers get the point: Promises were made, promises were broken, her order was bungled, supervisors were contacted, and she made a fruitless trip to a brick-and-mortar Verizon store, among other hassles.

SOS emailed Sorensen’s complaint and her email confirmation to Verizon media relations factotums David Weissmann and Steve Van Dinter on Dec. 30, and Weissmann replied that same day saying he’d get someone to look into the matter.

Less than six hours later, SOS heard from Sorensen, who said she’d just heard from “Shayna” from Verizon’s “executive office.”

“She was calling in response to your inquiry and was happy to correct the problems with my account,” Sorensen wrote. “She credited my account for the $583.35 of missed credits through January 2020, and ensured she added a monthly credit of $29.31 to be applied to the remaining four months on the phone contract.

“Amazing that in just a few hours, you were able to get a problem solved that I’ve been trying to fix for 19 months!” she said.

Another Frontier fix

In other phone-related news, Irene Joyce’s landline service in rural Richland Center is now (mostly) working.

Joyce’s daughter, Maureen Spitzley, said on Dec. 11 that her 83-year-old mother’s service from Frontier Communications had been spotty for months, and Joyce later reported that from late November until the Friday before Christmas, she wasn’t able to get incoming calls. With poor cell phone reception in her area and five children in five states, that was a problem, Spitzley said, and numerous calls to Frontier weren’t getting it fixed.

SOS let Frontier’s vice president of corporate communications and external affairs, Javier Mendoza, know about Joyce’s service woes on Dec. 12 and again on Dec. 27. On Dec. 31, Mendoza wrote to say “Ms. Joyce’s phone service has been restored … and adjustment has been issued to her account.”

SOS confirmed on Wednesday that Joyce could get incoming calls, although Joyce said she’s still having occasionally problems with dropped calls, which she has let the company know about. She said Frontier provided her with $96 in credits to her bill.

Joyce’s was the sixth Frontier-related problem SOS has helped solve in the past six months.