SOUTH U.S. -- Need Serious Help; From Alltel--Verizon--T-Mobile

[thejoz]

Okay this is going to be long probably to read but I need help.

I had been an Alltel customer for years. My mother got me and my brother started at Alltel several years ago, and I finally got my own account last year, putting myself and my wife on our own plan in about May.

For reasons I will keep to myself to prevent any unnecessary argument, my wife and I decided we would rather switch from Alltel to T-Mobile instead of continue on as Verizon Wireless customers.

Our billing cycle ran from the 21st of a month to the 20th of the next.

On June 1st, just a couple of weeks ago, I went to T-Mobile and made the switch. We had our numbers ported over, and I assumed that was that. I assumed that the next thing we would see from Verizon was the early termination bill, but we don't care about that cost, that was part of the planning in switching.

It has been just over two weeks, and several problems are afoot:

1) We aren't getting text messages from anyone not on the T-Mobile network. Their customer service has been great to me in trying to get it fixed, but they seem baffled as to where the problem lies; whether it's their network somewhere, or Verizon's. We suspect Verizon's, but aren't sure.

2) I went to log on to My Verizon earlier to see if they had taken us out of the system yet. They have not. Nothing on the website that I could find seems to even hint at the fact that we essentially canceled our service two weeks ago.

This is troubling because I am now worried that we are going to be charged for something that we didn't use.

My brother had a problem with Alltel, because he had been told that he wouldn't be charged anything but the termination fee, and ended up with a 300+ dollar bill because he had transferred his number a few days after his bill had been sent to him, or something to that effect.

My last Alltel bill was for the cycle from May 21 to June 20, with a bill date of June 9th. We did not owe any money to them, because they refunded my deposit from last year into this bill.

We thought we had figured out that we had to cancel the service sometime before either the June 9 or the June 20 day, because those were key dates...we wanted to not get charged for another month of service, but would happily pay the termination fee to not be part of Verizon and to move on with T-Mobile.

But now I am worried and quite frankly, really irritated, because from reading the Customer Agreement on Verizon's website, it almost appears that this is going to happen to me anyway.

...terminations by you during a monthly billing cycle become effective on the last day of that billing cycle. You'll remain responsible for all fees and charges incurred until then and won't be entitled to any partial–month credits or refunds. You may be able to take, or "port," your current wireless phone number to another service provider. If you request your new service provider to port a number from us, and we receive your request from that new service provider, we'll treat it as notice from you to terminate our service for that number upon successful completion of porting. After the porting is completed, you won't be able to use our service for that number. You'll remain responsible for any Early Termination Fee, and for all fees and charges through the end of that billing cycle, just like any other termination. If you're porting a phone number to us from another company, we may not be able to provide you some services, such as 911 location services, immediately.

This seems to say "Okay you can terminate whenever but we'll charge you anyway"??

I thought previously we had been governed by the Alltel agreement, because that's what a letter in the mail I had gotten said.

...until the part where it said "Your Verizon Wireless agreement takes effect May 21, 2009"

So, what is the deal here?

After all this reading, it would seem to me that our porting and transfer will somehow be incomplete until that day?

What is going on here? I feel like I have been screwed, because they said one thing regarding the termination fee (that we'd be governed by the Alltel agreement) and then turn around and say the Verizon agreement kicks in on xx date.

They did not make any disclosures as to what that would mean if I wanted to not accept these changes, say, the way the credit card companies are doing, and did not say what would happen if I canceled my account after that day.

I assumed this would all be pretty uniform, but apparently it is not.

Someone with more experience on this please help me out, I want to know what is going on, and what I can do about it.

Thanks.