Verizon Wireless has poor customer service

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . June 25, 2011 . 10:07PM

Not everyone. Some of us think Verizon Wireless can die in a fire.

It takes desperation to get to that stage of thinking, my friends. Let me explain my situation.

In February of 2010 I got the Droid Eris. I enjoyed that phone a lot. It was cute and man could that thing zing along. Unfortunately, my Eris had a sickness. When I would type on it, it would scroll to the left and stay there or mix and match my words. It did this on all models and it finally became a known issue and around Christmas of 2010, Verizon offered to replace my Eris with the Droid Incredible.

Keep in mind I pay money every month for an extended warranty to make sure that my phone works.

From the beginning of my time with the Droid Incredible, the phone would randomly reboot. I didn’t notice it but once or twice a week because my phone generally stayed on silent. When the random reboots started taking place in the middle of my phone calls, I decided to start seeing if there was a pattern to the problem. None was found. I left the ringer and notifications on and realized that the reboots were taking place at least once within every 12 hours. This was unacceptable to me and I called Verizon.

I explained that, in my job, it is important that I not inadvertently hang up on clients who may not be ready to deal with my hanging up on them and then not being able to call them right back because my phone is busy saying, “Droid!” and rebooting. They sent me a refurbished replacement Droid incredible. Within 12 hours the phone had rebooted again. I called Verizon back.

Over the course of week I spent over 10 hours on the phone with Verizon reps who generally put me in tears with their lack of understanding and down talking to me and went through 4 phones. Few of them made decent notes on my account and I was forced to re-explain my situation every single time I called. I also had to talk to two reps on every call (Tier 1 and then a Tech). I made 3 trips to Fed-Ex, a 20 minute drive, to either pick up phones or send them back. Finally, an understanding rep sent me a different model. Before I agreed to it, I asked her to look to see if there were any known issues with that phone. “Nope, there are none!” she cheerfully stated.

She cheerfully lied.

When I got the phone, a Samsung Fascinate, I was excited. No random reboots here. I was pleased. I loved all things about the phone and I thought that I could finally relax.

This was until I went to work the next day. I rely upon my GPS to get me everywhere. I use Waze to show me accidents or hazards on the way there and I also sometimes have to go places that I’m not familiar. I need my gps because I’m honestly not good with directions.

Tonight, I called Verizon and talked to Charles. Charles ran me through some fun tests and listened when I told him I’d tried everything I could find on the net (remember, I like this phone–I liked my Incredible, too) and checked his own known issues where he confirmed that “yep, this is unfixable unless you want to do things outside of what I can help you with.” Yep. I know. Rooting is the only known fix for this and I wasn’t about to void the warranty I pay for every month. He was very nice and offered to replace the phone with a different phone. I considered it, but the phone he wanted to replace the Samsung with also has known issues with rebooting. I am not wanting to get into that particular bag of nuts yet again. I politely declined and told him I’d try to stick this out a bit longer.

Two hours later, I went on my evening walk. For those that don’t know, I try to walk as often as I can and one of the things that helps me the most is my application for Cardiotrainer. What I didn’t realize is that because my GPS always says “still searching,” my Cardiotrainer wouldn’t log my workouts at all. This was a dealbreaker. I walked home in disgust and immediately called Verizon. Charles had politely offered so surely this wouldn’t be an issue for me, right?

Wrong. Remember how I told you how I was treated with the Incredible? Here we go again. “I’m sorry, since we sent you the Fascinate, I can’t send you another device.” What? Charles said you could and had your rep been honest in the first place, we could have avoided all of this in the first place. “I don’t know what Charles told you, but he didn’t indicate that you went through anything technical nor do his notes indicate that he offered to switch out your device.” Well, we’ve already noted that reps don’t write anything except the bad stuff in my file, so color me unsurprised. How about when I told her how I did a factory reset and, because I’m clearly a lying liar, she asked me in a smart tone, “Oh? How do you do a factory reset.” I said, “Really? I’ve done these with every phone I’ve had. I’m not new to this. I don’t have it in front of me so it’s going to be hard for me to remember the steps very well but…” and then I went on with the steps. Thank you, tech, for implying that I lie because clearly my new phone isn’t NEW ENOUGH for me. Even though I said at the beginning of the call if “someone could fix this problem in this particular phone I would like to stay with this phone.” Hey, you’re a clever cookie. You got me. I was so jonesing for something else that I didn’t do everything in my power to keep this cool freaking thing so I could get a phone that frankly is a smaller and a little heavier than I wanted.

Also color me unsurprised that yet another rep is willing to work with me on fixing a problem that I shouldn’t even be having.

Verizon, you place your reputation on excellence in coverage and customer service. I’ve received neither of those in my entirety in this contract. What I know is that you are wasting my time and your money by sending me defective devices and giving me the runaround when I call you on your behavior. Fix the devices, fix the problems and send me a phone that works and you won’t hear from me again.

What’s sad is that I’m a throwaway customer to them, even though I’ve been a loyal Verizon customer since 2003. 7 years is a long time. Longer than some marriages. After all the pushing you did on me last week to go ahead and upgrade early, can I just say that I am incredibly thankful that I was smarter than that. Why on earth would I re-upp a contract with a company who treats me in a way that puts me in tears after a phone conversation? Who feels like it’s ok to waste 2 hours of my time a night when I’m working on my dissertation with their nonsense instead of just doing the right thing?

Verizon, I’m done. You and I are breaking up. At the end of my contract, we’re through. I’d sooner get a pre-paid junk phone than deal with awful customer service and phones that don’t work. You’re no better than Sprint when dealing with your customers. You have a lot of growing up to do if you want to stay at the top. Just remember it doesn’t take much to fall.