The easier option I'm afraid would have almost been to just not pay your bill.

No, I'm not even kidding here, Verizon has apparently in the last year randomly just been turning on multi-month past due accounts and going "lol we'll just let you come back if you pay your next month's bill like nothing ever happened" and zeroing out thousands+ dollar past due balances in the name of "customer loyalty".

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/verizon/comments/1tqh4or/400_overdu...