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Replying to:
Re: Worst service from Verizon Wireless
silver6056
Specialist - Level 1

Deedge wrote:

My sons phone quick working.  Before he heads back to college I asked for an exception to allow him to upgrade 2 months early.  Verizon says NO you have to wait the 2 months we can no longer make an exception.  Spoke to a supervisor and got the same answer.  What happened to service?  How about empowering your employees to make a decision instead of no all the time.  We are Long time Verizon wireless customer for 8+ years with 5 phones on our plan.

I can tell you Verizon just lost all 5 phones and I will make sure I post comments and let as many people as possible know about this service.

Looking forward to shopping for a new plan and 5 new phones tomorrow!

You are running in to two things here.

1) The old "If we make an exception for you, we would have to make one for everyone".  This is unfortunately absolutely true.  Many/most people want to upgrade their phone ASAP when the next model comes out or they simply want a change.  It's not to hard to stop a phone working so VzW cannot allow this as a reason to allow an early upgrade.  There is also no good way to assess each claim on its merits, so it's easier (although of course not great customer service) to have a blanket policy on this.  You could try to use/borrow an older phone for the next two months, or buy a new one at full price, using the saved upgrade for later.

2) You have 5 phones, WOW!  Lowell is going to cry when he hears that you are leaving.  Sorry, this is another case of a customer overestimating their worth to the company.  VzW has about 95M customers, Verizon Communications millions additional on the wireline/FioS/internet side, many big businesses paying millions of dollars per month on their bill.  Your revenue contribution is in the noise of the noise, so even though Verizon Wireless would assert that every customer is valuable and important to them, that really isn't true, at least in the sense it is worth their while to give you any special consideration.

And, as you tell everyone of your horrible experiences with VzW, you will hear others telling similar stories about AT&T/Sprint/T-Mobile/Boost/.....   In general, people tend not to overly like their mobile carriers because although they have no realistic model to tell them how much the service SHOULD cost, it always seems too expensive.   And the carriers do themselves no favors with nuisance fees (such as the upgrade fees) and unpopular if necessary changes such as removing unlimited for subsidized upgrades.