"I received my Verizon One Bill statement and noticed it seemed quite a bit larger than usual," wrote one reader. "My bill includes land line, wireless and DSL, and the wireless section had a 'carry forward, pay immediately' charge of $56. I call Verizon Wireless and get the usual drone reading from a script. After 30 minutes of being on hold, I'm told that there was a bill in March 2004 that I didn't pay, and I need to pay it immediately unless I could prove it was paid. Why would I keep three-year-old Verizon bills? I pointed out to the drone that I've been a Verizon wireless customer for 15-plus years, and that before the day is over they'll either realize the stupidity in this billing error or cancel all my Verizon accounts. I can live without a phone and Internet, it's not like Verizon's the electric company. Next I'm handed to a supervisor, who basically says the same things. I tell her I'm going to go eat dinner, if she can get approval to remove this silly charge, great. If not, just cancel my accounts. I get a call in a bit with the solution. Turns out I pay the 'communications' department, which divvies out my money to the three individual entities. Apparently they just forgot to pay the wireless folks in March, 2004."

Since the hard line the reader took with Verizon got the issue resolved fairly quickly, he wasn't going to bother sending in the gripe until he thought about it some more. "The reason I sent it was because of the stories we hear of older people just paying something like this without thinking to question it. The more I thought about this happening to others, the more disturbing it became. It's a cynical world."

Sure enough though, just days later I heard from another reader who had just had an oddly similar experience with Verizon. "When my wife and I returned from a long vacation she thought that her account balance with Verizon Wireless was too large," the second reader wrote. "She always makes our payment for our two lines and text messaging at the Verizon kiosk, and she had paid the last $86 bill before we went on vacation. I logged into to our account online and saw it was showing a negative payment of $86 in the payments history. When I called about it, the Verizon rep sidestepped for a while until she finally told me that my wife's payment had been deducted as it was really a payment made by someone else who notified Verizon that he'd mistakenly filled in my account number on a form."

That this supposed other customer happened to pay the exact amount owed by the reader that month didn't seem to strike the Verizon representatives as an unlikely coincidence. "I went down to the local Verizon center where I was sure I would get my money back. When I arrived early in the morning, the customer rep informed me that I needed to take my place in the queue by entering my name, phone number, (and decline the offer of e-mail specials) into one of their many conveniently located kiosks. After I had done that, since I was the only one in the queue, the rep told me I could proceed to her station and explain my problem. After explaining my problem to her, she dials Verizon customer service on her telephone and hands it to me, and I proceed to explain my problem a third time, and I get the same story. After arguing for at least 15 minutes that they had effectively reached into my pocket and taken my money, they told me that a supervisor would get back to me in an hour."

After the reader returned home, he received the call from the supervisor with whom he had to go through the same arguments all over again. "After that I gave up, saying they can keep my money as Verizon obviously needs it more than I do. I'm loath to call them again for the sake of my own health, as they'll no doubt just take the same tack. They said they would credit us the money when I produce the receipt, but my wife of course had tossed it out by this time. I felt it wrong that they did not feel it necessary to show me any proof of their story, yet it was incumbent on me to show my proof. Of course, I'm sure their rights were well protected by the voluminous contract I had to sign in blood. I just think their software glitched and the 'other payment' overwrote mine in their database, or worse, there isn't another payment and they know it."

I guess if there's a moral to this story, it's that if you must deal with Verizon, check those bills closely, and make sure you keep your old receipts as well. There's just no telling when Verizon might decide that they enjoyed getting your payment so much that they'd like to get it again.

Too many gratuitous charges on one of your monthly bills? Tell us about it by posting your comments below, calling the Gripe Line voice mail at 1 888 875-7916 or writing me at Foster@gripe2ed.com or phone.