I recently had someone fraudulently upgrade two phones to smart phones by breaking into my online account. I had a strong password, but they apparently had my SS# and had the password reset. Once in they can change your mailing address,alert settings, and email such that you will not know what is happening until it is too late. It did take two phone calls to finally get resolved, but within a few days I had credits back to my account, and everything back to normal. Customer service also noted my account was old and no longer competitive and gave me a better deal (saved me money). In all cases, the hold time was less than 2-3 minutes and once connected the agent stayed on the line with me even when transferring to another department.
Lesson learned for me:
- Add the extra account password to your account to give you one more layer of defense.
- Have customer service add a note to your account to "not allow" online resets of account passwords. If you lose your password, you will have to go to a local Verizon store to show photo ID to reset your account. Not bullet proof, but enough deterrent for most if you are paranoid like me.
- Assume someone out there has your birth date and social security #, and make sure you have some form of identity theft monitoring. I doubt any of those services would have caught this issue, but LifeLock and many others will at least note someone trying to open an account or take out a loan with your personal info.
Most blog posts are negative since most folks will not take the time to note a positive experience. I was assuming I was in for a long battle when this started based on the negative blogs, so I wanted to post this to show that it does go well sometimes. Customer service is a tough job, so thanks for making my experience a good one.
(an "no", I don't work there or think Verizon is much different than anyone else, just wanted to say thanks where warranted)
