Why I hate verizon wireless: a story of frustration

[Vallikat]

I am posting this story on multiple forums to reach as many people as possibe, so if you've read it already, I apologize.

My story starts probably 3 years ago. I walked into my local Verizon store and I bought a phone on a pre-pay plan. I chose pre-pay because for me this makes the most sense. This worked out for me just fine for awhile.

Then this past New Year's Eve I wanted to call someone to wish them a Happy New Year. Instead I received some strange error message that didn't make a whole lot of sense but I figured was trying to tell me that this person must be out of myarea or something. I was a tad loaded at the time so I can't really recall the error, just that there was one. Ok, so time goes on and I realize that I don't really care to call Verizon and find out what that meant or even if my phone still works. It just doesn't matter to me if I have a cell phone or not. So I shoved the phone in a drawer and there it has remained.

Fast forward to this past Thursday, September 3. On Thursday I start to think about the fact that I have plans to go away to the beach for the holiday weekend as soon as I leave work on Friday 9/2. After talking it over with my family we decide that we'll all meet at our favorite restaurant down there. I tell them I'll get there as soon as I can, I get off work at 4:30 and will probably take 1.5 to 2 hours to get down. So thinking this through I think that I should probably pay for more minutes on my cell phone so that I can call them and let them know if I run into bad traffic or something. So far, so good.

I stop at my local discount pharmacy and try to purchase a phone card. The clerk pages his manager, who never shows up. After I wait several minutes, the clerk says, "I really hate to page him again". At this point I tell him not to bother and I leave. I figure I can just get minutes online, right? Wrong. I try to get in online and nothing works. No more links to the freeup plan, my account doesn't work, nothing works, nothing is the way it used to be. So I figure, forget it, I'm going back to the Verizon Store and get this all worked out. I figure my phone is kind of old now anyway and it looks like they have a new plan so maybe I can get a good deal on the new plan.

I arrive at the Verizon store and after waiting 20 minutes I am finally helped. The salesman seems very friendly and tells me that the reason why I couldn't get minutes on the free-up plan is that they have a new plan now and anyway my number seems to have been given out. I tell him that I tested it and it says its not in service. He tells me that its been given out. Ok, well, he knows better than me. I pay him $20 for re-activation and $30 for new minutes. So that's $50. Fine, good, great, I'll have a working phone again. I ask about getting a new phone with the new plan but they have no deals and with accessories and whatnot I'm saving myself $40 by keeping my phone. Ok. That's fine. Nice salesman not trying to sell me a new phone. Yay me.

In the process of activating my phone, he gets a call and starts talking. He presses some buttons on my phone, it makes some happy sounding beeps. He asks his caller to hold on, hands it my phone to me and says, "you're all set," and then returns to his phone call. I walk out feeling "I'm all set." Ok, he didn't test it first but it did make happy beeps and he did tell me I'm all set, so shouldn't I feel good about that? Evidently not.

I get home and program in a few numbers I've accumulated since the last time I used it and start testing to make sure they work. Only, the phone isn't working. The recorded verizonvoice tells me that my number is not in service. I try calling it and get the same thing. I start getting frustrated at this point because the verizon store is now closed. So I go online and start going through the help and of course get nowhere and finally decide to call customer service.

The rep who answered the phone seems very helpful. She tells me that the number the salesman gave me is not an active verizon number. She doesn't know how he even rang me up with that number, but regardles, she's going to help me. She asks me to open the phone and read off a number to her. She tells me this series of numbers will tell her if the phone has been assigned any number in the past. When she comes back she tells me that it never had a number. I tell her that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because yes, it did have a number. She says not to worry about that. She then proceeds to tell me though that I've paid $50 for him to essentially do nothing. He did not activate me on the plan and he did not add minutes to the number since the number doesn't technically exist. Ok, this pisses me off, but I have my long weekend to think about. I tell her to just charge me for more minutes and I'll deal with the guy in the store when I get home.

So after going through the process she walks me through how to activate my phone and again it makes happy beeps and gives me a new number. Yay me, again. Only, she doesn't sound so happy. She tells me that the number that I received is assocated with an account that still has a balance, so it can't be used, for obvious reasons. We have to activate it again. Ok, that's fine. The second time.... and the third time.... By this point she's getting frustrated and she tells me that she's going to put me on hold and get some help.

After several minutes she comes back and asks me when this phone was on a contract. I tell her that it never was, I bought it on a pre-pay plan. Its never had a contract. She tells me that the reason why we can't activate it is that its the phone itself that was previously associated with an account with a balance. I tell her that's impossible. She tells me that she will transfer me to contracts and I can sort it out with them. Only when she transfers it, I get disconnected. When I try calling back to customer service the recording informs me that since it is now after 11 pm they are now closed.

I hung up the phone and curled up on the couch in the fetal position and cried.

The next day, I go to work and being as its a holiday, they let us go early, 2:45 to be precise. I drive directly to the Verizon store. The girl at the door asks me how she can help me. I tell her that I am one very unhappy lady and that after 30 minutes in their store and over an hour on the phone with customer service and still not having a working number I would really like someone to assist me immediately. She tells me there are 6 people in line ahead of me. I ask to see a manager. She tells me that the salespeople are better equipped to deal with an activation issue. I tell her I want immediate help. She tells me that there are 6 people in line ahead of me. I walk to the back to the managers desk, where there are 2 men sitting there evidenly doing nothing.

I approached the first guy and explain my plight. I apologize for jumping ahead of 6 other people, but I was quite certiain my frustration level outstripped any of them. He told me it was no problem, he can help. He tried to get me activated, no go. He looked up my account in the system, there are 3 account numbers but no phone numbers associated with any of them. He calls tech supprt, they can't help without a phone number. He starts getting frustrated. He calls customer service. He gives them the account numbers. They tell him those account numbers don't exist. For 20 minutes he tries to help me, to no avail. That's when manager number 2 steps in.

Manager number 2 tries to activate my phone but also to no avail. He tries tech support and fails. He tries customer service and fails. He can see that there seems to be an error in activation. Its what they call an "error before the switch". He explains to me that what this means is that they gather all this information re me and my phone and then transmit this data through a switch at which point activation occurs. Only my information isn't making it through the switch. After a considerable amount of research on his part he finds out why.

It seems back when I first bought my phone, since I was on pre-pay they didn't need my social security number because they didn't need to run a credit check. Thus my number was keyed in as 123456789. Over time they discovered that this was causing a lot of problems and so they locked out the usage of this field. At some point towards the end of last year during some system maintenance or other they blocked my account as being possible fraud because it was associated with several different possible identies. Duh!! Thus explaining the funny error that I received on New Year's Eve and also thus explaining why I couldn't get my account activated.

Ok, so now that we know this, it should be a snap to fix, right? Wrong. It seems can't just go in and either remove or update my SSN because my account is marked as fraud. So he calls the fraud department and they ask him if he confirmed with me if my phone had been lost or stolen, he tells them that I confirmed that it was always in my possession. So the fraud guy tells him that unless the phone was lost or stolen he cannot remove the fraud flag or he'll lose his job.

More than an hour after walking back to talk to the managers, manager 2 finally has a brainstorm. He tells manager 1 to go to the back and get a new phone of the same model. He then plugs in the numbers from the inside of the new phone which takes the fraud flag off the account, he activates the new phone, moves my memory, get me a new number and transfers my minutes. Finally. By the time I left, I was too numb and too exhausted to either push for something free to make up for my pain or to tell them to shove it up their collective asses (which would require me to start all over again somewhere else).

Now I ask you good and kind people of diverse ages, ethnicities, cultures, religions, and education levels: Have you ever in your lives or since the invention of the cell phone (for those of you who've been around longer than it) have you ever heard of anyone having so much trouble getting their cell phone to work?

[Mummu]

well so far i had NEVER problems with a cellphone.
But i dont have one, so....

interresting story non the less.

[Coltess]

Bummer!
I don't remember ever having any problems of that kind.

[Cowtipper]

I haven't had problems getting my cell phone to work, but I have had problems getting my cell phone turned off!

I purchased a cell phone in order to help establish some credit. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn't really help any. Plus I figured I could have something in case of emergencies since my truck wasn't a reliable vehicle at the time.

My service provider was Sprint, and I figured they would have the best coverage in my area since they are my long distance carrier. Well, at my house I have no signal. In my yard, there was no signal. There wasn't a signal anywhere in my area until I got onto a main highway about 8 miles away from my house, and even then it was weak. I found a tower here in town, but it's far away from my work as well, so my signal is weak here.

So the phone became useless unless I was near this one tower. I could have gotten the plan for minutes outside of my signal range, using other service's towers, but I figured why the hell should I spend additional money on that? Anyway, Sprint sucks here, just a little fyi.

So after a year goes by and I only use the phone for maybe a total of 17 minutes of conversation, I decide to cancel the account since it totally sucks. Which I told the guy on the phone.

A couple weeks go by and I get a bill in the mail. I figured it was the last bill for the account for the last month of coverage, so I send in money for it. The next month I get another bill, I set it aside and didn't receive another bill after that point. I get a call another two months later from a collection's agency telling me that Sprint sent me to collections because I hadn't paid my bill for several months. I was giving the guy a WTF on the phone, he gave me the number to call to straighten shit out.

I talk to the guy and said that I had my account canceled in January, here it was May. I hadn't even turned the damn thing on during the whole period of time, nor had I received a bill. He said that it had never been canceled, but he went ahead and canceled the account, and reimbursed me for all the charges since my last payment.

I haven't heard back from them about cell phones, but the buggers keep wanting me to get DSL. Even after I have yelled at them on the phone and asked them to stop sending me crap, I still get messages left on my answering machine and fliers in my mailbox.

[Katy]

Ah, cell phones, the bane of everyone's existance.

I honestly don't have too many cell phone stories of my own. I've had two cell's through different companies over the last few years, but neither were solely in my own name.
The one I am using now is a rather expensive p.o.s. But work pays for half of it, and my boss paid for the phone itself, so I'm leary to complain too much about the fact that I can only get reception if I contort my body into unnatural positions and hop on one foot.
Other then that, the only real issue I've had with this phone is my long distance bill. As far as I know, I have nationwide coverage. I am on the same plan as both my manager, the owner of my store, and the owner's whole smegging family. Now, out of all these people on the same plan, you can imagine that we've called quite a few states. A month or so after getting my new phone, Sky (the owner) calls me up and asks if I've called texas. I have a couple net friends in texas, and my best friend is stationed at an air force base there, so I say yes, I've called texas several times.
Sky informs me that for reasons unknown to the rest of the universe, AllTell has charged me long distance for several long conversations with texas numbers. We spent a while baffling over this, because he's called texas without any issue. Finally I just said to put the charges on the half of the bill that I paid, rather then screw around with it. It made a decent quick fix, but now I can't call anyone in texas for fear of astonomical charges. This really sucks when my best friend is on leave and back in town. She'll be seven miles away, and I can't call her 'cause her cell phone is a texas number, and I'll be charged long distance for it.
This is probably something that could be fixed, but I'm just not willing to spend hours fighting with a cell phone company, because I know they're total bastards to deal with.

That's the best I've got. Though a friend of mine has a great one involving a phone, a toilet, and the sales guy at a verizon store

--Kayten

[Ashval]

Don't own a cell phone...never will...despise them with a passion.

[Mummu]

Don't own a cell phone...never will...despise them with a passion.

not with passion. its more like i dont care about them.

[Xtrophic]

The one thing I love about my cellphone is the silent mode That way I can totally ignore incoming calls should I want to Or if I want to be really evil I can enable call filtering so that only a select few numbers get through to me.

But at the same time I love to have my cellphone handy in case of emergencies and other stuff. I never drive my car without my phone with me, because if something happens I want to be able to make that call. One demand I have on cellphones that I am quite picky about is that they are capable of BlueTooth connections, so I can run a cordless headset with it. The reason is simple, as much as I want my phone with me in the car, I never want to talk by holding it in my hands.

My service provider, Telia (biggest sucker in Sweden) offers excellent service and coverage, world-wide included. I've never been in a situation where I have a bad reception. Most of the time I have 100% reception. This is also the case when travelling around the world, really good reception.

Some of the service providers I used when I've travelled:
* T-Mobile: Was kinda crappy... didn't support more than just making phone calls. Switched to AT&T very fast, since I have a few providers I could choose from.
* AT&T Wireless: Perfect service, could use every advanced feature on my phone as well.

[Highlander]

I use verizon.. but I never had that many problems, that's just severe bad luck there.... I only have it incase of emergencies

[Katy]

This is also the case when travelling around the world, really good reception.

Dude, X, I've seen your cell phone. You could rule the world with your cell phone. You can do more with your cell phone then I can do with my computer.
Please feel free to die, and make sure to leave your cell phone to me when you do or I will be forced to resurrect you, beat you to a bloody pulp with a blunt object, then take your cell phone anyway.
The same goes for your digital camera.


--Kayten

[Switchfront]

Sorry to hear about that Val, I work for Cingular..[no I will not help you all with your bill, nor will I listen to your complaints.. thank you ]

Whenever I activate any phone, whether it be Prepay or Post, I always make a test call to make sure it works. If it's prepay, I call out, then give credit back on the account so the customer doesn't lose minutes. This is what they all should do instead of just assuming it works.

I can't stand when reps answer their phone while waiting on a customer.. we have peeps at work that do that.. I can understand if it's a business call and you HAVE to answer it.. sure we have "demo" lines that we use to give our number to customers should they need to reach us (yeah right like I do that) but sometimes there are a select few who know what the hell they're doing with a cell phone and I give them my # knowing they won't call me at 5am wondering why there's no dial tone on their phone, or any other stupid moronic problem. Anyway, on these demo's I do give them out to my friends but I also have my friends in my phone book of that phone.. when I see it's them calling and I'm with a customer.. nope won't answer. If it's an unknown call, sure it's probably a customer and I'll answer it quickly if I'm not in the middle of discussing something with a customer in the store.

My point of that big long paragraph is we have peeps.. not many.. like.. 1? lol Not naming names just in case That will answer their phone while activating someone or something that doesn't really require talking to make it happen.. but they'll answer their friends, family, whatever.. be like "Yeah, we'll try to make it to dinner tonight, do you need anything from the store" F*** THAT.. I'd be pissed off if I was a customer.. be like "B**** you better put your attention towards me.. I'm the one paying your comission check.. not your friends." I don't get it.. my mgr never says anything to em.. but oh well.. guess it happens..

I just got reminded by all of that when you said that guy just played with your phone while he chatted on his cell phone to someone else.. totally rude.

I like muh cell phone too, Moto V600, bluetooth w00t, lub it. I use it with my PPC and play on the net, got the Moto Bluetooth headset too which owns, AND i gots the car kit installed by teh tech. Many benefits of WORKING for a cell phone company but... being a customer.. that's always 50/50.

Anyone jumps line at my store though, I go postal lol.. I'm just like that cause I picture myself as one of those other customers waiting in line that are just as much in a hurry as the person wanting to skip line We have a sign in sheet at our store, works out really well, cept for the ones who don't pay attention when they walk in and expect to be waited on next.. when really.. there's about 7 people in front of em

The stories I could tell.. We'd have this post going on til the end of time..

None the less, sorry to hear about your situation, I'd be well pissed off too

I must state my hate for Nextel before I submit..

How many F'n times do I have to walk in walmart or any other store and hear 'BLEEP BLEEP! "Yeah?? HEY MAN WHAT'S UP!" (phone - "OH NOTHING MAN, YOU GONNA COME DOWN TO THE BBQ TONIGHT?!!") Guy on phone.. "YEAH SURE MAN, WE'LL BE THERE!" (phone - OK blah blah blah blah) I... NOR DOES ANY ONE ELSE WANT TO HEAR YOUR F'N CONVERSATION JACKWAD!...

It's stupid.. Sure 2way.. cool idea for people out on job sites communicating back and forth.. but for someone using the option to blast they're convo to the world when they don't have to?.. nope... Lame.

Thank you and until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.

haha

-Switchy