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Customer Retention or Customer Abandonment?

You hear stories of how difficult Customer Service call centers can be and think "it can't be that bad..." It is. On three occasions I have spent over 1 hour on the phone with the Customer Retention department trying to renew/upgrade my service with Verizon. I recently signed up my daughter (who moved into her first new house) with FIos Triple Play just like Dad had provided her with for the past 8-10 years at home. Good news, it was MUCH less expensive for MUCH better service than Dad has been paying for so many years AND she gets a $500 Visa card! Super! So, Dad calls Verizon to find a reasonable way to either get the same deal or something close. So sorry, you are not a new customer so you cannot get the same deal. How about something close? Well, ok but there is still an $813 difference in cost over 24 months! So, do I have to cancel my service and come back as a new customer to get a reasonable deal? "That is your choice, sir" WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO BE SO DIFFICULT? So I call back a second and third time over a period of 3 weeks and now the price goes UP and the incentives go DOWN!

IS there anyone, any department, any hope of going just a little way to make a reasonable deal to retain a customer? Or is it too much trouble and easier to abandon that customer and hope that maybe he will sign back up later? Maybe it will be just too much trouble to cancel the service? Really?

IF THERE IS ANYONE OUT THERE THAT CAN GUIDE ME TO A REASONABLE RESOLUTION, PLEASE RESPOND!

Comments

Anthony_VZ

Verizon has always offered premium pricing to new customers and have done so since the inception of FIOS. This is a basic marketing technique for the acquisition of new customers. I am sorry that you are no longer within your promotional period and were unsuccessful at getting back into it. The only department within Verizon that can override costs is the retention office. I am sorry that they were not able to give you anything close to what your daughter is getting. Before canceling and reordering though, I would double check to make sure that you would even get new customer pricing at that point. Because when new service is added, they will run the regular credit check they do with all new sales and see its already been run on your social already and might not even give the new customer rate. I am not too sure, which is why I suggest double checking before doing anything.

WScott3

JUST CURIOUS...was that response addressing my plea for assistance in obtaining a reasonable resolution? Or was it just a not-so-veiled warning that Verizon will go to great lengths (searching CREDIT REPORTS for prior inquiries) to ensure that an exsting, LOYAL, decade long customer does not cancel service and obtain better pricing by re-subscibing?

Help me out and point me to the sentence where you are either assisting with a resolution or pointing me in the right direction?

WScott3

Hello. Is this thing on? Can anyone hear me?

somegirl

@WScott wrote:
Help me out and point me to the sentence where you are either assisting with a resolution or pointing me in the right direction?

@Anthony_VZ wrote:
Verizon has always offered premium pricing to new customers and have done so since the inception of FIOS. This is a basic marketing technique for the acquisition of new customers. I am sorry that you are no longer within your promotional period and were unsuccessful at getting back into it. The only department within Verizon that can override costs is the retention office. I am sorry that they were not able to give you anything close to what your daughter is getting. Before canceling and reordering though, I would double check to make sure that you would even get new customer pricing at that point. Because when new service is added, they will run the regular credit check they do with all new sales and see its already been run on your social already and might not even give the new customer rate. I am not too sure, which is why I suggest double checking before doing anything.

*points*

WScott3

Thank you?? If you had read the initial post as carefully as the unhelpful Verizon response you would have noticed that I have spoken to "Customer Retention" several times for over an hour on each call, to no avail. But, seriously, you've been really, really helpful.

fw_guy

The more common experience amongst friends and colleagues, is that Verizon is willing to give a little on price for current subscribers, but not a lot. Even when you threaten to leave, very little give on price.

Once you leave, they come back with new subscriber offers and deals. I know it frustrates my friends to no end "Why couldn't you have done this while I was still a customer???" but I'm guessing it's Verizon policy, as anyone can threaten to switch carriers, few people will carry through on the threat.

I'm going through that now, switching back to Comcast, as our Verizon triple play now costs over $170 (after fees, taxes, executive bonuses, etc) which comes out to over $2000 per year. That's a lot of beer and pizza ! ! !

My biggest concern with Comcast, is their digital voice is notorious for drop-outs on sound.

Wish me luck, and maybe I'll be back here in 2 years.

mcdorian

@Anthony_VZ wrote:
Verizon has always offered premium pricing to new customers and have done so since the inception of FIOS. This is a basic marketing technique for the acquisition of new customers. I am sorry that you are no longer within your promotional period and were unsuccessful at getting back into it. The only department within Verizon that can override costs is the retention office. I am sorry that they were not able to give you anything close to what your daughter is getting. Before canceling and reordering though, I would double check to make sure that you would even get new customer pricing at that point. Because when new service is added, they will run the regular credit check they do with all new sales and see its already been run on your social already and might not even give the new customer rate. I am not too sure, which is why I suggest double checking before doing anything.

I've never been denied new contract prices when I resigned with my old cable company. We've been shelling out about $5000 to Verizon (wireless & FIOS) @every year for years and someone @ verizon told me they'll not honor something that they said they'd do so we'll cancell and never come back. We'll start with FIOS.

drmahk

I've just had the same bad service experience. Well, still having.

Back in April I spent about an hour with Customer Retention and they gave me a one year price lock-in for internet and phone. The adjusted the April bill and we paid it. The May bill was correct. Then the June bill comes in and they've bumped the price back up.

I've talked to both the phone customer service and the email customer service; I've given them the confirmation number of the agreement, and a printout of the actual email CR sent me. And they act as if that did not exist and say I have no rate lock-in.

After 25+ years with Verizon, it may be time to give Comcast a shot. And when my contract with Verizon Wireless is up, get my phone unlocked and move on as well.

bea_nj

I contacted them, the representative offered a price reduction though not quite at the rate of new customers. I accepted as it was certainly easier than changing providers etc. OMG, the Verizon rep yanked all my pay channels to offer the "deal."

Busprof

I recently wanted to move from phone/cable/internet to internet only. After shopping around, I found Comcast offered a $49.95 plan, as did Verizon. So, after calling, I got turfed to the retention person, and I got the same line "Sorry, that rate is only for NEW customers".

I'm (as my handle implies) a business school professor at a major state university. So, I thought about this for a minute and realized that if it were profitable for Verizon to offer service to a NEW customer at that rate, it must be AT LEAST that profitable to offer it to an EXISTING customer. In either case (new customer added or existing one retained), they end up with one more customer than they otherwise would have, without the need to set up a new account.

Unfortunately, the retention person said, "I can't do that because you're not a new customer". To allow them to do that would have taken almost no effort. Instead, I get another story for my "Stupid Businesses" file. I get to share it with my students (about 200 per year) as well as with my friends (who are also college professors who teach large classes at other universities). So, the stupidity of Verizon gets shared with (at a conservative estimate) several thousand students in this year alone.

After I set up service with the new carrier, I then called back to cancel, and got another retention specialist. She proceeded to argue with me about why my new deal wasn't as good as the current one (higher speeds - not true, by the way). As I repeatedlytold her "I just want to cancel", she'd reply "I'm just making conversation". Ah--- no, you're not. After nicely telling her I just wanted to cancel, she finally got all frosty and impersonal and just processed it very quicky.

Technically, Verizon isn't a monopoly - they're an oligopoly (a few major players in an industry), But they act like they think they're a monopoly.

Good practices don't get mentioned. Excellent ones sometimes do. But BAD practices ALWAYS get widely shared.

trance

I have been through this same crazy scenario.....oh, but I was offered $5 off a month to stay...WOW! How could I turn THAT down. After some research with other local cable competition, turns out I can save approximately $500 a year, switching to another carrier. I even emailed Verizon and asked "why should I stay" based on the saving I found and they could not give me a reason. I dont expect to get the "new customer" pricing, but holy smoke.....give me a break for loyalty, at least. I should also mention the fact that I was one of the first persons to sign up for Verizon FIOS when they were just laying the fiber on our streets.

So fine, if were not happy, we abondon ship before it sinks. I will say that as more folks get fed up with this attitude (which is obviously happening), the Verizon FIOS ship will start to take on more water, because there are alot of folks that wont stand for it. Just saying.....as your customers contracts expire, you better be having some board room meetings on how to retain them....cuz there going to go. As for me, I have ordered my shipping boxes for all my HD boxes, DVR and wireless. Look at that.....Retention Center hard at work!

Regards,

Capt Morgan

ElizabethS

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