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Verizon Wireless Charges Israel Bound Customers with Bogus Roaming Charges 

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It appears that all is not smooth sailing amongst New Yorkers who had signed up for advertised discounted cell phone rates with Verizon Wireless’ Travel pass service. According to their web site, Verizon offers $10 a day for phone, text and data usage overseas in over 100 countries around the world including Israel.

The Verizon plan is ostensibly supposed to translate in to low bills and hassle-free roaming, but some customers who’ve come home to four-figure bills claim it’s anything but.

One of those who felt “taken for a ride” by the Verizon travel package was Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind who spoke of his plight and asked that Verizon rectify the unjustified charges that he and others incurred.

Speaking to the NY Post, Hikind said that he used the Verizon Wireless service during a recent trip to Israel and was socked with an outrageously high bill of $925.00  when he arrived home.    

Not only did Assemblyman Hikind’s tab include the expected charges of $10 per day, but the cell phone carrier also added 141 international minutes of international data for texts from Jordan. They appeared as roaming charges on his bill.

Hikind told the Post,   “I hadn’t visited Jordan. Not ever. So I knew there was some kind of mistake.” He added: “I thought it was a joke — and not a very funny one.” Through lengthy negotiations with supervisors at Verizon Wireless, Hikind was successful in having his bill adjusted to reflect the correct amount he owed, sans the bogus roaming charges that had inflated the bill.

 The NYPost had been in contact with several Verizon customers who have mysteriously received bills for roaming charges incurred in Jordan, even though they never went into the country. In addition to Hikind the same thing happened to Refoel Silberberg of Monsey and Sarah Moskowitz of Brooklyn who also reported getting massive charges for roaming in Jordan, supposedly incurred when visiting Israel over the last few months.

Moskowitz was on the hook for $500 in extra charges from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, also while in Israel.

After getting threatened with collections following a six-month dispute, Moskowitz got her bill slashed — but only after Hikind intervened.

It appears that devices may have accidentally roamed onto a Jordanian network despite the users remaining in Israel the entire time. Verizon didn’t pick up on the error, and instead billed customers for any roaming data used “in” Jordan.

Problems with the billing system aren’t limited to Israel and Jordan, either. One Reddit user claimed a bill of over $2,000 for a visit to Brazil, and another said that TravelPass activated even though he didn’t use his phone at all.

In the case of the customers the NYPost spoke to, Verizon negotiated individual cases to reduce (but not eliminate) the roaming charges. Silberberg told the Post that “[Verizon] said if you get too close to a country’s border, you hit their towers and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s wrong.”

Also adversely effected by the Verizon billing fiasco was David Ben Hooren, the publisher of the Jewish Voice. On a recent business trip to Israel, Ben Hooren (who also uses Verizon cell phone service) was hit with a whopping bill that reflected erroneous roaming charges that purportedly emanated from Jordan, despite the fact that he never entered that country.

“Besides this policy of overcharging customers, it also appears that Verizon Wireless does not even recognize Israel. When I arrived in Israel, I received an immediate text message from Verizon, in which I was welcomed to a fictitious country called “Palestine”, he said. “I really wish that Verizon would not inject its politics into its customer policies,” he added.  

“These people used an advertised service in good faith only to find themselves bilked out of good money and hours of wasted time trying to rectify a problem that is clearly a Verizon Wireless issue,” Hikind said.

A company spokesman said, “We are looking into the customer issues you shared.”

By: Helga Gertstein

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