A few days ago my son's cell phone broke so we got in touch with Verizon to see about options for replacing it. We were told that he could get a Pixel 8 for free. He prefers a headphone jack, which that phone does not have, to Bluetooth, but free is a good price so I told the agent on chat that if it was free we wanted it. Prior to that both the agents we had chatted with had referred to the phone being free.
The agent gave me a URL for the transaction and waited. When I asked what he was waiting for he replied for my payment. Clicking on the URL I discovered that we were being charged over a hundred dollars for the "free" phone, supposedly the sum of sales tax, which the agent said had to be paid to the government, and a charge from Verizon.
Sales tax on a price of zero is zero, as I pointed out to him. It was still a low price for that phone but it was not really the phone my son wanted and I prefer to avoid transactions with people who lie to me.
I attempted to get in touch with Verizon to complain over the phone, was told to interact with their robot help, when I repeatedly asked for an agent was referred to a link where I was repeatedly told there were technical difficulties and I should try again in a few minutes. After an hour or so I gave up. Since I cannot complain to Verizon I am doing so here.