Complaint Review: Verizon Wireless - Internet Internet

For at least the past ten years, I have been a Verizon Wireless customer, & until recently, I have never had an issue with the company. Their plans have great pricing, the coverage in my area is impeccable, & the representatives in the store have always been more than willing to meet customer satisfaction.

Until recently, that is. Last year, I upgraded my phone to the LG Rival, after my LG EnV was clearly out of date & useless to me. This is where the issues begin. Clearly, like any young adult, I purchased the insurance on the phone since accidents & loss are bound to happen.

By the time summer rolled around, my Rival was having extreme software issues, due to no fault of my own. The phone would often freeze, the screen would glitch out, resembling a TV static screen, the phone would underline random words in red, it wouldn’t hold a charge, the phone would shut off or restart itself for no reason or in the middle of a text or phone call,  or it would completely shift the screen to the left or right so that only half of the screen was visible.

I took it into the store of course & was informed that the insurance program had switched over to Asurion, & I would have to file a claim with them & wait the specified number of days for a new [aka refurbished] phone to arrive in the mail. Fine, I could deal with that, three days wasn’t too long of a wait to continue to deal with the piece of crap I was holding in my hand.

My refurbished phone arrived, I shipped the old one back to them, & all seemed well. Until two weeks later, when the refurbished phone started showing the same symptoms as the first. First the charge started failing to hold. Next came the shutting off & restarting, followed by the screen shifting. Once again, I returned to the store. Went through the same motions, filed the claim, waited three days, & was once again gifted with a refurbished version of the Rival.

Can you guess what was happening two weeks later? I’m sure you can. I went through this five times. *Five*. By the fifth time, they were completely disregarding what information I was giving them in the store, & had simply started shipping a new battery pack. Through November & December, I was in the store every few days, sometimes multiple times a day, seeing as I was not the primary phone holder or account holder. I was continually given attitude, shifted from person to person, & blown off.

I’m used to this kind of treatment. I’m a twenty-one year old female with a mohawk, facial piercings, & tattoos. In the beginning, never once was I rude, irate, or anything other than courteous, laying out my plight in brief & to-the-point conversations, & simply asking for help. Towards the end, I had started making it clear that I was sick of being dicked around, that I was a long-standing customer who until recently had no issues with their service, & that I expected the situation to be remedied. What kind of service was I paying for anyways?

It finally boiled down to I could either cancel my contract early, having to pay the fees, or I could buy a new phone at my own expense. My mother, who is the account owner, had finally had just as much as I had, & went into the store with me. Just as I had before, she laid out our problems, was calm with a business-like manner, & wouldn’t you just know it, she was treated much more receptively than myself & offered a different array of options. We ended up using the up-grade available on her line to acquire a Kin-Two for myself, since the available free Wi-Fi at hot spots was something that would [hopefully] end some of the hidden fees I had been receiving with my Rival. We extended our contract & once again purchased insurance on the device.

A little over a month ago, on January 19th, we were once again hit with a larger-than-expected bill due to data charges. I will accept this as my fault; a little too much status-updating. She called customer service to have a data plan added to my phone. All should be just fine, correct?

On February 4th, I was at a club with some friends & my phone was misplaced. Whether it was taken, slipped from my pocket, sat down somewhere, the reason is irrelevant. Point is I didn’t have it. We contacted Asurion to file the claim, & they would not accept it. According to their records, on January 19th, the insurance on my phone was canceled, the same day we had the data plan put on it. We were told to contact Verizon. After doing so, we were informed that they couldn’t name the representative for us who canceled the insurance, because their system does not keep those kind of records. Now began the telephone shifting, from one representative to another as they very nearly refused to let us speak to a supervisor as requested. All we wanted was the insurance reinstated on the phone so that I could get another Kin-Two.

They informed us that they no longer sold the Kin-Twos, nor did they have any refurbished ones in stock. They said that if they re-instated the insurance [which we would have to pay for] they couldn’t guarantee what phone would be sent, but that I would receive a new phone. No, I didn’t want to be sent a phone that would require a data plan simply to work, nor did I want some outdated phone that would just continue to glitch out a few weeks after receiving, as was clearly the issue in the past. They recommended we call our local store to see if they had any Kin-Twos in stock.

Guess what our final options were? After speaking to the representative there, we were told that we could either purchase a new Kin-Two in the store at $430. Excuse me? I only paid $75 for the phone to begin with. Next option. I could wait until May when another of the lines under our names was eligible for an upgrade. Going four months without a phone? Not happening. Or, we could purchase a different phone, once again at our own expense. I will admit that by this point, the two of us were pretty peeved. We asked what the cost would be to simply cancel the contract & take our business else where. $95 to cancel just my line, $365 to cancel all three lines. Both options were cheaper than buying a new phone, new insurance & extending my contract once again. Now, I know what some of you out there are thinking.

“You were given multiple options to work with, & you chose to disregard each option.”

With the experience & treatment I have received in the past year, & how often I have had to threaten to cancel my contract in order to receive any kind of help what-so-ever, so be it. I would rather pay $95 dollars & take my business elsewhere - say MetroPCS or Cricket where you can get unlimited everything for less than $50 a month. I’m not going to make my family suffer through the cancellation fees & start-up fees elsewhere since they both adore their phones & have no issues with them.

That doesn’t mean that I am not greatly pissed off, insulted, & dissatisfied with what I have had to deal with. I don’t know exactly what policy changes have been made within the company from recent mergers & such, but the website’s claim of “Expect the best customer service at every turn from our employees,” is complete & utter rubbish. The customer service we have dealt with in the past few months has been nothing but, & excuse my French, complete sh*t. 

I *will* be cancelling my contract & taking my business elsewhere, & you can bet I will be informing anyone thinking of switching to Verizon of my experience. Friends of mine have been dropping Verizon left & right due to the fact that just because you offer great coverage & plans, doesn’t mean that you can treat the people paying you their money each month like trash. For those who continue to adore Verizon, just wait.