Two years ago my wife and I left Verizon to go to AT&T because we wanted IPhones and at the time Verizon did not offer them. The cellular reception with AT&T was awful but we had to wait out our two year contract to come back to Verizon. Our two year contract was up at the end of October and on October 30th we were at a local Verizon store to reestablish our relationship with Verizon Wireless. The sales rep ran our application and was unable to process it because of a fraud hold. First of all, both my wife and I have over 700 credit scores and and we were able to provide any information to verify who we were at the time, so I was extremely shocked that words like "fraud" were even mentioned to us while trying to reestablish out account. But after spending over 2 hours in the store with two restless babies, we were told that they would have to give us our trade in phones back but that they would call the fraud department the next day. Both my wife and I were very concerned because we knew that we weren't committing any fraud and if someone had attempted to commit fraud using our information, we wanted to know about it ASAP. The following day the sales rep was working on this issue the first thing that morning so we were certain that she was trying to help us get the matter resolved. After speaking with her she stated that someone from the fraud department would be calling my wife to verify some information, which they did and my wife provided all of the requested information to prove who she was. We were told that there was a mandatory fraud hold on our application with no reason provided; but the fraud department informed us that we would have to call back at 6:00 the next day which would have been November 1st. To make a long story short, we ended up going to another Verizon store to complete the application and were met with the same unexplained roadblock. We spent 2 1/2 hours at this store trying to get this issue resolved and once again left the store without new phones because of a hold placed on the account by the fraud department and were once again not given an explanation. We were assured by the store manager that they would work on getting the matter resolved the very next day. Since we had already paid for all of the accessories and even ported all of our contacts and emails to the new phones, we were certain that we would be able to get our new phones the next day. This morning I called the store manager and he told me that he was on hold with the fraud department and had been on hold for over an hour and that they could still not release the phones. I asked for the number so that we could also call to find out what was going on. We called the fraud department and were on hold for over an hour. Finally, a young lady came on the line and assured us that she would release the application and that it would take 2 minutes to an hour but she could not give us any information at all about why were were experiencing this issue. At this point I am beyond upset because we have NEVER ran into any problems establishing a business relationship and if we had been I'm sure that we would be given a reason why. I would like to know who we can contact to file a formal complaint for possible discrimination and poor service. I am going to be reaching out to others to see if they've had similar experiences with Verizon because I am certain that there is something going on that needs to be investigated.

Actually I posted my concerns here because I understand that most largecompanies that are cognizant of people's perception of their company paypeople to ensure that online concerns and complaints are addressed.Actually, the issue has been resolved and we ...

I realize that the account was flagged in the first city, but when a SECOND attempt was made in a different city, it MAY lead the fraud department to believe even more so that fraud was being attempted.Additionally, attempts at identity theft are quite often perpetrated by people who DO have the necessary documentation to prove they are the people they are trying to defraud.

The account was flagged for fraud in the first city. It had nothing to dowith where our application was processed. And if you had a business andyou suspected fraud, I would hope that you would have a competent group ofpeople working to investigate those matters in a timely manner so that youweren't unnecessarily turning away people with 788 credit scores and all ofthe necessary documentation to prove who they are. This matter is aboutthe fact that Verizon's fraud department is managed by a group of ineptindividuals and there is very little oversight to ensure that customers arenot unnecessarily inconvenienced. I work in Risk Management so I understanda company mitigating their risk exposure, but I also understand thatcustomer service and Risk Management must work in conjunction to ensurethat your exposure is not inadvertently increased due toan overzealous Risk Department. Maybe you should do some research on thisissue because there are countless complaints online about this very issue.

pherson, > My issuehas been resolved.Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

If I were a company and someone tried to open an account in 2 separate cities over the course of a day or two, I would certainly suspect fraud. Just sayin...

Thank you. His or her points to a degree have no merit. I still dont see possible discrimination. >Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

First of all, I said that there was possible discrimination and that thematter needs to be investigated. If there is a policy of discriminationwithin the company it could be imposed for any number of reasons. SinceI've worked for a company and had inside knowledge of its discriminatorypractices, I know that it's not beyond the realm of possibility.And I haven't received poor service from anyone in the local stores. They've all seemed quite embarrassed about the fact that they hadto spend excessive time on the phone trying to get answers from their"fraud" department to no avail. The poor service has come from the factthat my wife and I were denied service and given no reason and the factthat we've spent close to five hours in local stores trying to get thatservice. And we were give an application number and informed that it didnot make a difference which store we went to because all of our informationwas stored in the system. We went to a different store because we were ina different city at that time and were trying to establish service beforebeginning a new billing cycle with our current provider. The store wentto had absolutely no bearing on the "fraud" hold. If there is a validreason for the red flags, someone should be competent enough to tell uswhat those reasons are and know how to verify who we are.And I didn't attempt to start a relationship by filing a complaint. Itried starting a relationship by dragging my family into two differentVerizon stores and patiently spending five hours of my time trying toconduct a completely mundane transaction with a company that I hadpreviously done business with for over 10 years. > Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

Why is it discrimination? Why is it poor service?It seems like from your story everyone bent over backwards to get it resolved. You however went to another store to try to get phones, thwreby raising a red flag again. There could be a number of reasons why they are reevaluating your identity. Youre trying to set up a complaint being a new customer? Thats a lovely way of starting a new relationship!

Re: Information about filing a formal complaint

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I fully understand fraud and I understand how sophisticated people

committing fraud have gotten. I regularly conduct training on fraud

detection, and our employees are given clear instructions on how to handle

suspected fraud. First of all they are instructed to not even utter the

word “fraud” when speaking with a customer because it causes panic among

the customers who have done nothing wrong, and it tips off the person who

is actually trying to commit fraud. The innocent customer is either left

wondering who in the heck has committed a fraudulent act with their

information; or wondering why they’re being unfairly singled out by your

company--- neither of which are what a large company with unlimited

liability exposure wants. My concern here is not the fact that something

raised a red flag within the fraud department. My concern is how my wife

and I were essentially informed that we were being investigated for fraud

and then given absolutely no information for several days. My concern is

also how we were allowed to spend hours in the Verizon store while sales

reps worked to “figure out what was going on”. Why wouldn’t they know what

was going on? And why would there not be open lines of communication

between the fraud department and the local stores. There needs to be a

policy that requires sales reps to inform customers that there has been a

mandatory hold placed on their application and that someone will be

contacting them within 24 hours. That is all they should be saying to

customers, but instead they’re upsetting customers. There are similar

complaints about this fraud department all over the web and I can assure

you that there is only one common denominator in all of those

complaints----the Verizon fraud department. If I did anything to damage my

company’s brand while trying to mitigate risks, I wouldn’t be employed very

long; but apparently Verizon hasn’t thought that one through.

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