Jet Pack ussage overages due to equipment failure, where to get help?

Question

During the month of May, I received alerts that my data usage on my jet-pack was exceeding our usage plan. This is highly unusual for my husband and I as we simply use the Jet Pack for internet (it's not connected to our television or any kind of home management system). There are two users (My husband and I) in the house, neither of which use the internet for more than web browsing. We do not download movies, or transfer giant files. A 10G plan is more than enough, as our normal usage usually leaves us with 3-5G left over.
When the overages started, I immediately contacted Verizon about this to try and find the problem (investigation of phone records will prove this timeline). We went through the standard procedures to make sure of certain things like, a secure password, that we were turning our devices off at night, so on and so forth. After several days of back and forth between customer service representatives and finally technical support it was discovered that the battery in the device had "burnt up" (for lack of better term) and in the process it also burnt and warped the SIM card.
We had to go to our local Verizon store to get a new SIM card and a battery was shipped to us by Verizon. At our local Verizon Store we were told the damaged SIM card could definitely have caused data overage issues, because of data transfers being repeated, and that once the equipment was inspected by Verizon the charges would surely be corrected. Verizon Support didn't agree and said we had to pay the balance due. We disputed the overage portions of the bill and they were set aside until the battery got to Verizon for inspection. Verizon never asked to see the SIM card just the battery.
That battery has since arrived at Verizon and has been inspected. Verizon support told us that neither the battery nor the SIM card could have caused the overages or any kind of data transfer issues and it was our responsibility. We have paid the balance.
When our usage is reviewed, it is extremely obvious when the overages started. We went from using 10-20,000k a day to 1-1.5 million k per day. Over the course of the next two weeks we battled this overage problem with the Verizon Support Team. Once the battery and burnt SIM card were discovered, technical support told us to stop using the device and they would send a new battery and we needed to get a new SIM card from our local store. (Note: I had already purchased a second battery for our use [power outages, or traveling] but it took a day to get a SIM Card) You can see in our data usage the 0K usage, this being the time it took to get the new SIM card. With the new battery and new SIM card installed we were back to our original normal usage of 10-20K per day. By examining the usage, it's plainly obvious that the damaged battery and SIM card were the problem.
The proof is in the pudding here. The bad battery and burnt/warped SIM card caused astronomical data transfers, once the battery and burnt SIM card were replaced all was back to normal. The data usage and our phone conversation timelines with Verizon are both easily inspected by Verizon, however Verizon still claim it's our fault.
Prior to taking this to court I would like to make sure I have exhausted all my channels with Verizon (This forum being one of my available channels), I would think that if someone in Verizon management would take a few minutes to look at the our data usage versus phone conversations, our usage history, and the damaged equipment and match that information with the phone records of our calls for support, they will see that we tried to do everything in our power to correct this issue while it was happening and that it was an equipment failure that caused the problems.
As I mentioned, we have paid the bill, however, this is only to keep the peace at this moment.
I am willing to take this to small claims court if need be, but there has to be a more civil solution for both parties here.
What is my next step per the support here in the Verizon Support forum?
Thank You for your time in reading this lengthy issue.

Answer 1

The rep wants to communicate with you via the forum's Direct Message system, similar to e-mails, since posting personal information is against the forum's Terms of Service.  Look in your forum inbox and there should be a Follow request from ashleys_vzw that you'll need to approve.  Then you'll need to hover over their user name:  ashleys_vzw and click Follow to send them a Follow request that they'll have to approve.  Once you both are Following each other, then you can send them a Direct Message by again hovering over their user name and clicking Message.