I am responsible for preparing checks to pay the bills of my boss and one of them is his Verizon landline bills. Last month, they had a couple of guests who placed international calls to Spain and Switzerland. Most of the calls lasted only one minute per call. Only a handful of the calls lasted more than a minute. The international calls summed up to 189 minutes and amounted to $905.71 (excluding local calls, taxes, etc.)

On August 21, I was able to talk to Mrs. Robinson, a Verizon representative. She explained that my boss is currently under the basic international call rates (which we are not even aware of.). Hence, calls to Spain was $4.20/min and calls to Switzerland was $3.70/min as stated in the bill. (When I checked the internet on Aug 27, Spain is $4.02/min and Switz is $3.40/min). I requested Mrs. Robinson if there's anyway she can make adjustments in the bill because this is too much. She said yes. I was on hold for 30 minutes, though she came back on the line twice to tell me that she's still working on it. After 30 minutes, she asked for our number where I can be contacted. She called me back later in the afternoon to tell me that the adjustments are not done yet but my boss's international bill will be given an adjustment of approximately $25.00. She said she'll call back later. She never did. The following day, I was able to talk to Ms. Okoloo and repeated my predicament. She didn't see any adjustments in my boss's file and told me that she'll inform Mrs. Robinson to call me back. She never did. The next day, I talked to Mr. Williams and repeated the same predicament. He didn't see any adjustments in my boss's file so I requested him to give the line to his supervisor or manager. I was on hold for God knows how many minutes and when he came back on the line, he said he couldn't find any supervisor. He explained that he doesn't have the authority to make any adjustments and he has doubts if the supervisor can do it, too. What he did was he enrolled my boss in an international plan where he has to pay $4.00/month and international calls are as low as 0.10 cents per minute (depending on the country). I told him how come your company never advertises this international plan. Mr. Williams answered it was on the flyers that come with the bill (but I never saw it.) I talked to him for more than 30 minutes, including the first few minutes where I have to press many numbers - press 1, etc. - and was on "hold" - all our representatives are busy... Out of frustration, I was still polite to say thank you and hang up. Verizon's charges for international plans is highway robbery if you are not aware that there are ways to save. They spend too much advertisements on convincing people to subscribe to their expensive cellular phones and plans but no ads (or lack of ads) on how to save. It is difficult to communicate with Verizon people. I spent too much time to be on hold, talked and then nobody ever returned my call. Ironical, isn't it?

(Note: We paid the entire bill for nobody ever returned my call. After that, I had a personal problem with UPS and surprisingly, somebody called me the next day to explain & apologize.)