Verizon Wireless has poor customer service

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

I know you read my title and you are questioning me already. What? Verizon Wireless? But they have awesome customer service! Everyone loves them!

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.

You know what happens when you assume…

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . March 14, 2011 . 3:20PM

One of my least favorite sayings in the world is, “Well, you know what happens when you assume, right? You make an ____ out of you and me!” This immediately makes me feel like making the other person really sad. Typically, the conversation is initiated by someone who has been wronged by the other person in some way. For example:

Person A: “Hey, you were late. I assumed you’d be here at 1:45 because the play started at 2.”
Person B: (In snarky tone) “Well, that’s what you get for assuming. You know what happens when you assume right?”
Person A: (blank stare and extreme self-control stops them from making the other person a sad person)

Essentially, what has happened here is that Person B has abdicated responsibility for his or her actions based on a snarky response that he or she believes is clever but really shows exactly how very little person B knows or understands about him or herself as a person. It also indicates that they have no respect for the person they are talking to and that they consider themselves far more clever than they really are and have no excuse for what they’ve done.

Why do I say that they don’t understand their personhood? Well, from the time we are infants, we observe the world around us and based on those clues (assumptions!), we grow and develop. Without social learning we would have no idea of social customs, culture or social norms. How often do you see generally sane adults making faces at babies? Why do they do that? Because babies, who imitate, will do it back…and frankly, it’s just adorable. Infants pick up on the assumption that if they make those silly faces back at that crazy adult, the adult will reward them with a smile or a clap or a loud noise. It’s how we learn, people. Some of those assumptions that we’ve made, at some point or another, were facts. And, to be honest, the majority of the ones we make as adults are pretty truthful, as well. Not always, but a good majority of the time.

So, unless you plan on going around calling perfectly adorable babies ____es, please stop using that cliched phrase and start taking responsibility for your business.

Dear Walmart

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . October 25, 2010 . 12:14AM

Dear Walmart,

Honestly, I rarely go to your store for a cornucopia of delightful reasons. The main reason being that when I go into the store I come out feeling musty and dusty and like I need to take a shower. While you may have a more varied selection than my preferred store, Target, I’ve noticed that some products look like someone has run them over with a Hummer and that they have been opened, sampled and then put back like I won’t notice that someone else has taken a huge bite out of the Doritos I plan to purchase. Consequently, I no longer purchase Doritos, but I will talk about that in a later post.

In any case, I frequent your store in two circumstances: when I’m in a city, like my hometown, that does not have a Target, or when the item I need is not one that Target, Best Buy or any other store in the whole world (the whole world being a 15-20 mile driving distance) sells. In this case, I was looking for a 16G Zune player. This was necessary being that I was overly zealous on the treadmill the other day and whacked my rhapsody player off the treadmill deck and sent it spiraling to the belt where it promptly went zinging to the back of the treadmill and skidded 5-feet across the gym floor. It inadvertently almost knocked a boy off the elliptical behind me because he was laughing so hard he couldn’t stay upright. I realized it was unusable when it popped open in my hand. After trying other rhapsody players from my beloved Target, I gave up.

Wal-mart online showed me a Zune player that was $30 less than Best Buy. By this time, I’m already crabby because I haven’t worked out in 24 hours and I am kind of wishing I’d pushed the boy off of the elliptical machine. I got to Wal-Mart and, lo and behold, they have the Zune in stock. For $30 more than they advertised online. This isn’t new. Wal-Mart frequently discounts their items on their online store and charges more for their items in-store. So, to get something that is IN STOCK, I get to pay $30? Pass. I’ll go to Best Buy where I get a clean store, great customer service, a Best Buy rewards system and can use my $5 certificate for my rewards and where that same player will count towards MORE rewards. Oh, and hey, where BEST BUY won’t UNDERCUT ITSELF online. I’ve heard stories about Wal-Mart doing this with various products and refusing to honor the prices in their stores. If I wanted to wait five days, I could get Amazon free shipping. Or, better yet, use Amazon.com and get prime shipping or one day shipping and pay $30 less than both Wal-Mart & Best Buy.

What I know is this: I won’t be using Wal-Mart. And their policy of not meeting their own prices? Bull. This isn’t a franchise. This is a corporation. All the money goes to the same place. Enough is enough. I walked out today even though I really wanted that player and I had spent time, gas and money going there.

Places that continue to give me good service, Target, Best Buy, Amazon, the little stores around here? They’ll continue to get my cash. Keep up the good work, Wal-Mart. You make it easy not to give you my money.

Sincerely,