Life on the Road

I’m a prisoner!  But at least I’m going to tell you about it…

I got a letter in the mail from Verizon offering me a credit equal to a month’s service, if I was willing to renew my Wireless Broadband account contract for another two years.

Since we are not at all certain where life will take us at any given time, I feel like keeping that service is prudent even during the times like this when we are in a house for a period of time.  So I called and accepted. 

While she had me on the phone, the rep mentioned that my “device” (phone on a regular account, but modem on this one) was eligible for an upgrade under their “New Every Two” program.  We discussed it, and I went to their website to shop for a new device.

After picking out a very cute little USB modem – much handier than the card I had been using – I started through the checkout process.  I ran into trouble quickly:  It asked me to pick a service plan, and I didn’t like any of the choices it offered me!

It seems that they no longer offer the plan that I am on – including unlimited usage.  I am able to remain “grandfathered” on it, but any change would have to be to one of their current offerings – more money for fewer megabytes.

I called the phone center back.  The rep I spoke to told me to go ahead and go through the process and pick the plan that was priced the same as mine, and that she would then submit a request to have me transferred back to my old plan.

Trusting in this (silly me!), I went through the checkout process right then while we were talking, and she put through the request…

A few days later, I received the modem.  A few days after that, I decided to check online and make sure that the pricing plan had been switched back. 

Which, as you probably guessed, it had not.

I called Customer Service again, and spoke to a very helpful young man.  After reading the notes on the file and doing some checking, he explained the situation to me: 

What needed to happen was that a “Request for an Obsolete Pricing Plan” had to be submitted to management.  Once that was okayed, they could transfer me back to my plan.  He said he would take care of this, and assured me that he would call me back within a week with confirmation that it had been done.

Just to be on the safe side, I asked for his name again, and he gladly gave me his first and last name, extension number, and so forth.

This, naturally, produced a false sense of security.

After a week had gone by with no callback (surely you saw that coming), I called them. 

It turns out that you can only be assisted by whoever answers your call – they cannot transfer you to another rep, making his “extension number” and all of that just so much fluff.

So the new rep spent even longer reading through the notes on the account, and then again going through doing research and talking to supervisors.

After all that, she told me the exact same thing as the previous young man, right down to calling me back.

This time I didn’t believe a word of it, but I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter, either…

Each time I called – and oh, yes, there were many more times! – it took longer, since each time a brand new person had to read through the ever-increasing volume of notes on the account, try to figure out what had happened, and try to determine the solution from scratch.

The whole time on hold (it got up to over an hour this last time) I listen to their recording, which has some messages that absoulately made me grind my teeth after a while.

My favorite went like this

Here at Verizon Wireless, when you call with a problem, it becomes our problem.  We take ownership, and will do everything possible to get your probem resolved the first time you call.

HA.

Sometime in the middle of all this, I got a bill…  with a $200 data usage fee.  That was one of the times I talked to a supervisor.

To his credit, he waived the fee without question, and put a “sticky note” that pops up on the account advising the rep to credit the fees next month when I call. 

To his shame, he, too, promised not only to fix the problem but absolutely to call me back…  And never did.  Either one.

I laughed during one of the calls, when the person reading through the notes said that somewhere along the way one of them had put in a note that they tried to call me but got “no answer and no voicemail.”

The rep didn’t seem to get how funny that was, even when I explained several different ways the concept that they (Verizon) were calling my Verizon cell phone, so that obviously if they didn’t reach me they would have had to get the voicemail - so that clearly the whole thing was a made-up sham to cover their rear…

My original problem started before the end of 2008.  I believe it is actually just now resolved, some eight weeks or more later.

I will probably still have to call and get the next bill adjusted when it arrives, but hopefully that will not be a problem after all this.

And of course the last rep (another manager) never did call me back, either – but at least she apparently got the job done.

It does mean I’m stuck with them for two years.  But I feel trapped, as I said at the outset.  

I don’t feel like there are any competitive options for the Internet service (now that I have my plan back), and I’m trapped on their phone service, too, between the free “In-Network” calling to people who matter, and the truth of their “It’s the Network” advertising, giving us coverage everywhere we go…

So they’re not exactly fired…  

For now…