Dear Verizon,

I need to tell you about two recent experiences I had with Verizon Wireless over the past week.

First of all, I placed an order for in-store pick up at the Maple Grove, MN location on October 30. I went into the store a few times to try to pick it up. I waited for 40 minutes each time, and left because the store was so busy. I couldn’t get help.

When I finally picked it up yesterday afternoon, you were very close to losing me as a customer. Jeremy, the sales guy who helped me, was knowledgeable about the phones. I was upgrading at full retail price due to needing a new phone. Where things went wrong was when he continued to try to tell me about your leasing/Verizon Edge program… I told him I was NOT interested, and he kept pushing and pushing.  This is my money, how I choose to spend it, and he was pushing the program very aggressively. When I threatened to leave, he said he didn’t make any money on the deal, and that it was a better business model for Verizon because you don’t have enough money to invest in your network (?) Really? Is that something you want to advertise to your customers?

So Jeremy backed off, but then the Store Manager started in again with me at the front counter about the program, and I again told him I would gladly walk away from my order and leave. He would not stop either.  Jeremy finally got him to stop, and had I not needed the phone and had a friend with me, I probably would have left. My friend, who is also a Verizon Customer, was just as disgusted as I was with the Sales approach. I think the Maple Grove store is poorly managed, and this was apparent in my sales experiences there this past week, the sales associates’ behavior, and the behavior of the manager himself.

I stopped shopping at Circuit City years ago because the sales reps were pushing their extended warranty with the same aggressive attitude your employees displayed. They are now out of business. I stopped shopping at Best Buy as well. I would gladly stop shopping at Verizon and switch to AT&T or another competitor if you are having such severe problems investing in your network and need to badger your customers.  I really hope that this is not the way you want to treat your customers?

Also note, that I went to into the Delano Shock City Cellular Verizon Dealer on 11/1 and they would not honor the $699 price on the Samsung Note III listed on my order confirmation or the Verizon Website. They were charging $801 and $160 for 32 GB Memory Cards. Pretty Crazy. Again, do you want stores like this representing your business and your brand?

Seriously thinking about canceling all three lines when our contracts are up…You have also removed the contact us feature on your website, so I had to contact you this way... Customer service is evidently a thing of Verizon's past.

Thanks for listening.