Verizon Account Verification

It was late one night that I discovered that someone else was using my Verizon account. I knew I had a payment due, so I went online to look at my bill and noticed that there was a second line added to my account that I had no knowledge of. I didn't realize that this was even a thing, hacking into people's accounts and adding phones. I thought fraud was limited to just stealing credit card information, but clearly, I was wrong. I immediately knew I had to get to the bottom of the situation, and I called this number because it said it was Verizon's account verification center. 

I wasn't sure what that meant, but reading through Verizon's detailed help notes, it seemed that they were the ones who would assist me with fraud. Immediately after I called, I was greeted by someone saying, "Thank you for calling the Verizon account verification center." They also warned me repeatedly that my call might be monitored for quality assurance. Then, the message thanking me for calling was repeated with a different warning and another message about how my call might be recorded. I was waiting for a directory menu when it said that the office was closed.

I was a bit shocked, as it seems to be that any line that has to do with fraud should be open 24/7. What was more puzzling to me is that Verizon advertises 24/7 support, so why would this center close down? I saw it offers customer and technical support, so why not fraud support? Now that I knew about the fraud, I was not content letting anyone continue to profit off my line any longer, and I didn't know how to stop the situation on my own. As noted, this had never happened to me before. 

The good news is I found this general Verizon number, 1-800-837-4966, and was able to get to someone. I had to go through a lot of menus and directories in order to get to someone, but once I got to an agent, they were able to direct me to someone who could help get the claim started and put a stop on that line until the right department could deal with it in the morning. I think Verizon could be a little more proactive about these situations, given how many people they employ and how large their corporation is.