Dear Verizon,
I have been a customer of yours for 15 years. Your phone service has been exceptional (I've gotten reception in national parks when no one else seems to be able to get a signal), your prices have been competitive (until I recently upgraded from a basic phone to a smart phone), and I never had to contact customer service until recently. Before I had to come into contact with your amazingly inept customer service agents, I would sing your praises to anyone who brought up cell phone coverage.
Now I warn people. Sure, Verizon may have pretty darn good coverage, but stay far far away from them if you want to keep your sanity. Verizon's customer service agents and sales people are deceptive, incapable of simple logic, and they lie just to shut you up.
Some examples:
- The first customer service rep I talked to regarding changing a plan back to how it was (we were still within the time period to allow us to go back to how we originally had our plan) didn't seem to know how to read a phone bill. I had to walk her through a bill - how much data we had, how much it cost, how much each line access was, etc. I thought how to read a bill was common sense, but I guess not.
- The same rep who didn't know how to read a bill blind transferred me to another person. Not a good customer experience to be pushed off to someone else without telling them first.
- I was promised a supervisor call back in 45 minutes. Big surprise, they never called me back.
- When I finally got a hold of a supervisor (I had to initiate the call), I was accused of trying to alter someone else’s account. I was calling about my account that I have every right to alter. She quickly apologized, but when the supervisor’s first reaction is to be accusing, that’s not a very good sign.
- My phone service was disconnected while I was on the phone with the supervisor (for no reason that I know of). I called back on my work phone and the rep told me the supervisor tried to call me back but they were unable to reach me. Really?!?!
- When attempting to assume liability of my phone and my husband's phone (we had previously been on a family plan where my sister was the account owner; she had called Verizon and given us permission the day before), they had to run my credit twice…because the first person who ran it ran into a "problem" and had to transfer us to someone else, but he made no notation on my account that he had already ran my credit and it turned out fine. Later on in the day, after speaking with several reps, it seemed everything else was finally settled, so when the rep said that she just needs to run my credit, I told her I don't want her to because someone already did it this morning and he said it turned out fine. She said there was no record of that. Sounds very fishy to me. Makes me wonder what the first rep did with my social security number.
- I got tired of talking to incompetent front-line reps, so I asked to speak to a supervisor. After repeatedly asking to speak to a supervisor, I was transferred - to the Spanish line (not a supervisor)!
- I get a 21% discount through my employer. We got this discount when on the family plan with my sister, so I asked if I could just roll this discount over to my new plan; I didn't really care one way or the other whether they removed the discount from my sister's plan or not. They said no, I have to validate my employment again and it will take 1-2 billing cycles for it to show up. And no, they can't take it off of her plan even though she is not employed by the company that is getting us the discount. So Verizon would rather just lose money by giving someone a discount they're not entitled to…???
- Since it takes 1-2 billing cycles for the employee discount to show up, I asked a Verizon rep if I would be able to apply the discount retroactively to the bills that it didn't show up on. I kid you not, he said "It depends on who you talk to." Verizon, you need to have a policy in place. The answer should be either yes or no. If you do have a policy in place, your reps don't know about it. Perhaps they need better training.
- After my employment was validated for my 21% discount, I inquired whether I can have this discount retroactively applied. The rep flat out said no, but she can give me 500mb of data free for a year instead. I looked up the price per month of 500mb of data on the More Everything Plan. It's $20/month. I have absolutely no trust in Verizon so I didn't want her to touch my plan, plus I don't need more data, and we all know you get nothing for free with Verizon, so I told her no, I don't want the free data. I just want a credit of $14.70 (which is 21% off of my $70 data plan) on my next bill. Even though what I was asking for was cheaper than what they were offering me, she still said she is unable to credit me $14.70. Verizon, what the hell?!
- The last rep I spoke to was very apologetic about the run around I was getting from her peers, so she said she would give me a $50 credit on my next bill. I didn't see this credit when the bill came around. So I used live chat to inquire about this credit. They said they don't have any record of it but will research it and get back to me by Sunday. I am not holding my breath.
So there you have it, Verizon, eleven specific examples of how your customer service has failed me in less than a month's time. Now, I am only one customer. You have undoubtedly pissed off many many many more customers in the same amount of time, and lord only knows how many times per customer you have failed. T-Mobile is not at all hiding its campaign to try to steal your customers (http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/switch-carriers-no-early-termination-fee.html). Verizon, shape up or see your stock plummet.
I hope to hear about how you're going to improve your customer experience. I don't want any more apologies. I've heard so many apologies from you but they really don't mean anything without an action behind it.
Atentamente,
One of your many disgruntled soon-to-be ex-customers
P.S. Instead of offering promotions such as the 500mb data free for a year, I'm sure customers would much rather see real money, like in the form of credits on bills. Money speaks louder than your lousy promotions.
