Verizon Applied Neighbor’s Significantly Past Due Debts to my Account

My current 2 year contract was about to expire so I called Verizon to change it. I was told I could not change a thing because there was a credit hold on my account. I am a 30 year customer with a perfect payment record so I was shocked when I was told I owe Verizon more than $2,000. It took a 2+ hour phone call, multiple transfers and several 3 way conversations, until one Customer Service Rep took charge and refused to give up. This Customer Service Rep, after multiple tries, finally found someone in the Verizon Credit Department who was willing to listen to common sense and correct my account. My townhouse community’s addresses are similar to apartment buildings, one overall street address per court then each townhome is assigned a unique unit number. My neighbor has the same “common” first name as me and the first 3 letters of our last names match (only 3 out of 9 for me). The Credit Department Rep told me that Verizon’s fraud monitoring system used this minor name similarity to automatically assign my neighbor’s outstanding accounts to me. It did not matter that my neighbor’s outstanding accounts had different full last names, account numbers, unit numbers, phone numbers, SSN, etc. My fear is at the end of the conversation the Credit Department Rep. said this could easily happen again because a “computer” did the initial assignment. My questions are. Is this even legal? Is there anything I can do and/or anyone I can contact to prevent this from happening again?​UPDATE: To answer some questions I am receiving and what suggestions I took so farI did check my Credit Report while on hold and it was OK. I plan to keep a good eye on it now.Verizon used to be Bell Atlantic which provided copper wire phone service so that is why I have been a customer for 30 years.I was lucking that SSN’s were required because the Credit Representative asked for my last four numbers as final proof that the other accounts were not mine. They had a different SSN.Thanks to a link provided in the comments I emailed what happened to two Senior Executives. I got an auto reply from one saying they just retired and use this link for making contact. I went to that page and filled out an on-line form sending it to another senior executive. I doubt I will get a response but will update this post if I do.In both the email and online form I highly commended the CSR who was determined to get my account fixed.​UPDATE 2: I’m Shocked, A person from Verizon’s Executive Relations Office called me and left me a message saying they are so sorry for what happened to me. They were happy a CSR did finally help me and they will be notifying their manager about my positive feedback and compensation. Finally they left a phone number and asked me to call them back tomorrow so they can talk to me about my experience. I will update this post again after this phone call. Personally, I give Verizon credit for responding to my email so quickly.​ via /r/personalfinance http://bit.ly/2CgaO6a