Verizon customer gets $1,500 refund after 5 years of phantom phone charges

Verizon is reportedly issuing a $1,500 refund to a customer who recently discovered that she'd been paying every month for a long-canceled landline. Lauraine Hollyer of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, says she canceled her family's second landline around the year 2000, according to a story today at NJ.com. For a long time, she was not billed for that second line, but the charges apparently re-appeared about five years ago without her realizing it.

"When I was paying the April 2015 bill, I looked to see why my bills were so high," Hollyer told NJ.com. "I realized that my bill included a charge for message rate service and line maintenance of $25.94."

She started checking old bills and determined that she had been paying for the phantom landline since April 2010, "when Verizon changed the format of its bills," the article said. "The monthly charges varied slightly, but the five years of charges added up to $1,500.28." She paid the latest bill, but deducted the $25.94.