Wouldn't they give you the credit after inspection on the spot? Or Verizon works differently from Best buy?
I think this was a agent store. It's probably like everything else there's a loop hole in the system that can be abused as in this case.
I would like to think if this was a corporate store Verizon would give the customer the credit in this case. Being this is a agent I don't know how they will handle it. The article said the couple in this case lost $1,500, and in most cases there's restitution the criminal has to pay so who knows.
I will say the couple in this case did this in November and finally reported it to the police. The police actually got involved and investigated it and found there were another 30 reports of missing trade INS and tracked them to her. I was kind of impressed the police even got involved to that extent to be honest. Maybe for FedEx missing shipments, empty boxes people should report it to the police. Maybe if FedEx had to deal with a bunch of investigations they might take this more serious.