I think the way Verizon does things with "late accounts" is very misleading.
In my case, since our phone bills are usually pretty small amounts ($50-$75), I would let several months' worth of phone bills add up before I would send them an online payment. Well, what they say they did was close my acct that had a balance of $169, and open up another acct in my name. So when I logged onto their website, it would look like our acct was in good standing with no outstanding balance due ,,,,, it seemed really fishy they way they did that. If it were not for me checking my CR, I might not have ever realized this info. I will use a PFD letter, but if need be, I will threaten to write our State Attorney and have him investigate their practice of closing and then opening accounts.