From what I can tell, there's two sorts of Verizon customers/ex-customers...those who are happy with the service and those who've had to deal with their custome

From what I can tell, there's two sorts of Verizon customers/ex-customers...those who are happy with the service and those who've had to deal with their customer service representatives, especially as it relates to billing. It's saying something that despite having experienced their network coverage, and it is simply better than anyone else I've tried, I will never use Verizon again. Their service is that bad. In my case, it all started when a family member on our plan had her phone stolen a month before our hardware refresh date. I called them up to find out what could be done. Since it was an iPhone, they said I could only buy a new one at full price since Apple wouldn't let them do early upgrades. My suggestion (pay the ETF) was something they'd apparently never heard of, thought of or had any mechanism in place to handle. After several calls and getting passed around for a bit, one of their representatives had an idea. If I added a new line, swapped the number for a month I could then call in and have the contract switched over once the line no longer had an ETF. My only cost would be $40 for the extra unused line that month. That sounded reasonable...reasonable enough that I asked whether I could do it for all of the lines on my plan to keep the hardware refresh dates in sync. They said no problem. Fast forward one month, I call in to have the contracts transferred over. Their response, "we don't do that anymore." The best they could do was put what was now 3 unused lines on hold so I wasn't paying for them each month, but that would freeze the hardware refresh date/ETFs at the full 2 years. And even that could only be done for 3 months. I must have called them 20 times over the six months I tried to get the issue resolved and I spoke to countless supervisors. Nothing worked. The only solution I could find, which I told them many times was my option of last resort, was to switch to another carrier who would pay my ETFs. Their support couldn't make it happen. The whole ordeal cost me somewhere between $500-$1k. I'm now with a different carrier with an inferior network. I've missed a few calls on occasion and had some drop from time to time. But their support is friendly and able to solve problems. So I'm happy. I also know I'm not alone. In searching the internet for how to resolve these problems with Verizon, you see there are large numbers of customers like me who are subjected to their byzantine billing system and end up being given an endless runaround.