After 20 years as a loyal Verizon Customer, Verizon has proven they don't care about existing customers or have the ability to educate the customer. Be careful the information you receive from Verizon Customer Service it will not be accurate. I have a family plan with four lines (3 smart phones and one older phone). I wanted to add a fourth smart phone to the account. Verizon instructed me the best way would be to add an additional line and cancel the older phone line on the 22nd and pay the $150 early termination fee. Assuming they were not misleading the customer and educated, I added the phone line called on the 22nd to cancel the line and was told it was $180 to terminate. Verizon's only explanation, the customer service rep must have been misinformed.
Beware, the only customers Verizon really cares about are the customers they are trying to switch from AT&T and Sprint.
Word of advice, make sure you get everything in writing that is articulated over the phone.
The fact you were charged an early termination fee indicates that line was still in contract. Was there any lines that were out of contract?
You wanted to go from 3 smartphones and 1 basic phone to 4 smartphones. If all phones were still under contract, you were not eligible for an upgrade and there would have been no way of getting another smartphone without ETF. Usually they don't even allow you to do that. The only other option would have been early Edge, but you would have had to get the phone that Verizon picked for early Edge and you had to be deemed eligible.
If you did have a line out of contract, then what Verizon told you to do was really costly. But if you did not have a line ready for upgrade, there was no other way.
You said that you were cancelling a basic phone? The ETF for a basic phone is $175. $180 is more then that. Could the second rep you talk to be wrong?
My issue was never the ETF. I had no problem paying the early termination fee, my issue was the advice and misinformation provided by the customer service representative. If you ask a specific question, what is the amount for terminating the contract? The answer is $150 and open a new line or buy a smartphone on the open market and pay the activation fee. I opt to take the advice of the CSR at Verizon. Call back on the advised date and the ETF changes. It's poor business practice.
Customer service with Verizon varies greatly from person to person, meaning agent to agent as well as customer to customer. If you read your customer agreement, found at the very bottom of www.verizonwireless.com you'll read a section along the lines of, "This Agreement and the documents it incorporates form the entire agreement between us. You can't rely on any other documents, or on what's said by any Sales or Customer Service Representatives, and you have no other rights regarding Service or this agreement." Which makes it seem as though you can't do anything, right? Well, we can verify the same piece of information across two sources as tedious as it may be for some, by contacting two different agents to verify a promotion or line access, you name it. Supervisors have the same access as their agents, but if you're sensing misinformation, request a manager.
I personally don't care to offer that as a suggestion, but this won't change from carrier to carrier. No one really desires a store position or customer service as a dream job and they have high rates for turnover, so new employees are added often.
So to confirm information, you should view changes representatives made through My Verizon and verify promotions and their requirements from www.verizonwireless.com, in relation to your specific issue, has your bill been changing over the past months? You should be able to estimate the cost of another line by gaining the line access charge ($40 is standard unless you're on new Verizon w/ device payment or More Everything $25 month-to-month discount), the device payment charge (available on the website), and feature charges such as insurance that are extra. Surcharges/fees taxes can be estimated at 15% to over-do it, but you can determine those from your other lines.
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