Yesterday, we went to the local verizon store in Wichita Falls, TX to add a line to my account for my daughter. She is currently using a prepaid phone with ATT and we wanted to switch her over to our Verizon account. She picked out a Nokia Lumia Icon that they had on display. The sales rep that we dealt with went to get the phone and a lot of accessories for it for her to look through. She decided not to get a case but she did want to get screen protectors.
The rep scanned the phone box and told us that instead of the $149.99 with a $50 rebate, they could do an instant rebate and would offer us $100 in free accessories. Yay! Great! Free stuff is always good! We went to look at accessories for our other devices as she had already decided that she didn't like the cases they had for her new phone. We settled on a bluetooth keyboard case for our tablet.
At this point, the rep handed us off to his manager so he could go help other customers. The manager went through the process of activating the phone. She asked if we would like her to put one of the screen protectors on for us. We answered that we would. She attempts to put the protector on and it doesn't fit the phone. After looking at it some, the reason it won't fit is that the phone they have is the Lumia 928 NOT the Lumia Icon she had picked out.
The manager looks into it and comes back to tell us that the 928, which is not on display anywhere in the store, is in stock. The Icon is not in stock and would have to be ordered. She asks if we want her to look up the differences in the phones, which we did. The Icon has a better processor, 1/2 inch larger screen, and double the memory of the 928. We told her that we did not want the 928 and for them to order the Icon. They ended up having to order it from another store in the area because the warehouse showed it as "retired."
At this point, the manager we're dealing with returns all of the accessories and hands us the tablet to sign for another $40+ because they won't do the instant rebate or the free accessories with the Icon.
So we wasted over 2 hours in the store dealing with this mess, had them try to give us a phone we didn't want without telling us it wasn't the one we wanted, and promise free goodies just to take it all back when we told them that we wanted the phone that we asked for in the first place.
If it hadn't been for the screen protector, we would've walked out with a phone that was inferior to the one that she looked at in the store and would've been left to figure this out later.
Not sure if the bait-and-switch tactic is normal for Verizon stores, but this was a very aggravating situation that wasted a lot of our time.
Good customer service would've done something to try to make this right...like maybe making good on everything they had promised during the transaction!
