Clear Rate Communications

I received a phone call one day back in December out of the blue from a company called “Clear Rate Communications.” A very pleasant young man said that he could lower my phone bill with Verizon. I told him that I was happy with my Verizon service and was not looking to change anything. He went on to tell me that caller ID, voicemail and long distance calls would be added to my Verizon service at a lower rate. When I enquired about my internet service, he explained that with his assistance, my rate would be locked in and never increase. He said that my existing service through Verizon would increase to $110.00 per month after a year. My existing internet service was only $32 per month. My total Verizon bill with internet was set at approximately $62.00 per month. He had me convinced that my service with Verizon would still remain and that his company was partnered with Verizon as well as AT&T and other phone companies, so I agreed to the service. Before ending the call, a woman chimed in and informed that I would be receiving a new router for $9.95. I told her that we already have a router in which bought from Verizon and we did not need another. She said, according to her records, that I was being charged a $5.00 a month fee for my router and the fee would not be included with the new router. When the call ended, I felt like I had just made a huge mistake. I called my fiancé to let him know what happened. He called Verizon the very next day to enquire about any changes to my internet and phone service. He also requested a block from having our phone service slammed by Clear Rate. Verizon said that there had not been any changes, but if something happened on our end, to please contact them. Yesterday, I received a letter in the mail from Clear Rate that had instructions on how to set up voice mail. My fiancé called the company to let them know that we would like to cancel out of their services. The woman on the line stated that she could not let me out of the “verbal contract” unless I pay a $99.00 fee or prove that my current Verizon bill was lower that their rate of $72.00 per month! When the call ended, my fiancé called Verizon to see if my account with them had been taken over by Clear Rate. According to Verizon, my service has been “locked” as of December 30th by Clear Rate and that there is a pending change by Clear Rate scheduled on January 8. Therefore, Verizon said that there was nothing that they could do. We then called Clear Rate to see why they had locked our service through Verizon and what were the changes that were pending for January 8th. According to Clear Rate, there are no changes scheduled for January 8th and they claimed that there is no lock on our phone service with Verizon. After contacting Verizon four more times and not getting much help or any answers to our situation, we were finally told that a ticket would have to be sent out to the Verizon technicians (which will take up to 5 days to process) and they would have to check our lines and go from there.