Daley Ponderings

I got a notification from a credit bureau today saying that a new account had been opened by: Verizon Pen, PO BOX 165018, COLUMBUS, OH 43216.
Since I haven't changed phone service since last year, it seemed odd that there would be a new account from Verizon.My mortgage company had their backup tapes lost in transit (via DHL) a while ago, and so signed us up for a free credit reporting thing.
I called Verizon Residential to see if they would have done a new account or anything, and they said no, that it must be fraud. But, a lady said she would look into it, and make sure that it wasn't some other Verizon company, Verizon DSL, FIOS, DirectTV, etc.
She called back 40 minutes later, but instead of leaving a message, put my voicemail on a conference call with another customer (who, by the way, also complained about the voice prompt system that Verizon has - it is the worst speech recognition accuracy I have ever seen -- three choices per menu, and it is wrong about 80% of the time).
I tried to call her back, but everyone insisted that she didn't exist, and transferred me from department to department trying to get rid of me.
Finally found a supervisor who knew how to click on the "view previous tickets" button, so was able to see that yes, a Tasha in a Verizon DSL billing department did exist somewhere, but he couldn't contact her. He decided it was a Verizon Residential problem, and transferred me there, and then back to the Residential fraud person.
Finally - someone who has a clue - she said that Verizon recently started doing credit checks every month, and because of the way they do the check, the credit bureau would report it as a new account. She also verified the Columbus, OH address, which every other Verizon employee said there was no way that was a valid Verizon address, unless it was a mall kiosk or something.
While I was on the phone with the fraud department, the non-existent lady called back, who had still been working on it, and had gotten a supervisor working on it too. They hadn't figured anything out, and were quite relieved to find that I had found someone with the answer.
Yay for speaker phones, so I could continue working while on hold. I don't think it is a record with Verizon, but this phone call was an hour and twelve minutes long.

I tried to get the fraud lady to tell other people that this exists, but she didn't think that would be really possible. So, since Verizon can't do it, I am providing this page to do their billing support for them.