Who I have the same questioned this topic

Good Morning,

I've been with Verizon for almost 10 years on my own plan, and was with them with my parents before that. I'm also Active Duty US Navy. I've been deployed 5 times while i've been with Verizon Wireless, and each time i've deployed i've opted to suspend my service due to deployment. Every time I come back from deployment, I come back to owing Verizon an obnoxious amount of money to reconnect my service, and the hassle of trying to convince them that "I'm deployed and have had no chance to use my service, which is why I suspended my service, but you guys are still charging me tons of monthly fees" isn't even worth it when I can just pay $1,000+ to reconnect my account and not deal with Verizon Wireless' terrible customer support.

Wrapping up my 5th deployment, and i'm trying to get my account straight, and as per usual, they want $1000+ to reconnect my service. I've contacted them ahead of time this time, attempting to get this resolved BEFORE I get back, so I can just have a ready available phone when I return. I've talked to them 3 times about fixing my bill, and each time the response is "Yeah no problem we'll fix it for you!", and each time they do literally nothing. Now i've tried using the chat option today to get it resolved, and I get a "Please wait while connecting you to a live rep." for over an hour, and never getting connected (With computer usage on deployment already hard enough).

I'm trying to weigh my options here, as I simply am not going to pay them $1000+ to reconnect my service again, when i've been gone for the last 8 months on deployment, and have other financial obligations I have to meet when I return. Should I keep trying to convince Verizon that I shouldn't have to pay $100+ a month for my service for the last 8 months, in addition to late fees? My other option is to just completely drop Verizon completely, and (Since I have a Pixel 3, my phone is already compatible with Google Fi service) change service to Google?

Thanks for any tips!