Canceled service before end of contract and billing cycle. Being charged an extra month!

Question

Hi. I have been a loyal Verizon wireless customer for a long while, but have had such a bad experience in the past year (where I have paid bills as high as $700.00) that I decided to cancel my services and move to another network. My billing cycle runs from 14th of the month to 14th of next month, typically. I have autopay set up to pay my bills and it deducts money for the following month on or around 6th of that month.
I ported out my verizon number to a service on 4th of this month and since my verizon account got immediately closed, I called up verizon to find out about the ETF and final bill. I was surprised to find that I had to not only pay ETF but also pay the bills for the next month (which I am not using as I canceled before the Feb 14th!). Is this common practice? I feel so cheated. I feel its a sneaky move to squeeze that extra amount of money from me!

Answer 1

shiphone wrote:
There were many options to choose from when my contracts ended every two years, and I stuck with VZW. The CSR whom I spoke with mentioned its a Verizon policy. She did not talk about billing error and mentioned to avoid paying this extra months bills I must have canceled my service before the bill was generated for the following month! I find that conniving.
But thank you for your response. 
I'm sure you stuck with Verizon because they were giving the best service for a reasonable price. That's not loyalty. That's just being a smart consumer. Being loyal would be sticking with Verizon when other carriers where offering equal or superior service for less money. And in that case that may be being loyal but it's also kind of stupid.
As far as your bill my new bill is generated about 4-5 days after the end of my billing period. So if your billing period ended on the 14th the new bill would be generated on the 18th. Verizon bills in advance so your bill that got generated on the 18th of January would be from January 15th to February 14th. Which would be due around Feb 6th. So you were billed correctly.