I had to create an account to share my recent story. I have chronicled my experience over the last two weeks. My intent was to upgrade 2 lines, remove 1 line and add a line from AT&T.
9/24/16 - 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM: I arrived with my wife to the Burlington Mall Verizon store in MA at 6:00 PM. We checked in and were told we had a 45 minute wait. The wait time was surprisingly accurate and were approached by a solutions specialist. The conversation was begun between us mostly consisted of the specialist attempting to tell some corny jokes, which lead to him making an inappropriate joke towards my wife. Upon our reaction, he realized his error and spent the remaining time with us sputtering to try to make things right. I was able to remove the line from my plan, but during this time he informed me that my line which has been with Verizon since 2006 and has had unlimited data since 2009, has just had its bill increased from 29.99 - 49.99 because my contract had expired. He explained that I could not get a better plan anywhere else and that I had received notice of this. I had not to my knowledge received notice and had unknowingly been paying $20 more per month for three months due to auto bill pay. Needless to say I was not ready to give Verizon anymore of my patronage after hearing this news so I went across the hall to AT&T to see what they had to offer. (Note to their credit Verizon did give $60 back for the time I was unaware of the rate increase). I did do some research and found that only with my current plan would I truly have unlimited never throttled data.
9/30/16: 11:30 AM-12:30 PM: I called Verizon customer service and after waiting for the necessary 30 minutes to talk with someone it was suggested to me that I create a sub-account to hold my unlimited data line and then create a new account for my remaining 4 lines. This would result in my total payment being reduced.
9/30/16: 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM Reluctantly I returned to the Burlington Mall Verizon store with my wife. Thankfully the previous insensitive solutions specialist was not working so we asked to be put on the waiting list. We were told it would be 1 hour. We waited 1 hour and fifty minutes to be helped. I have no idea what required that much time. They were not understaffed, there were other customers there, but the few workers that were not helping customers appeared to be running relay races between the front desk and the back room. This practice continued even while we were being “helped”. Our specialist informed us that he had to ship our phones as they were not in stock. He explained that activating the new phones would be simple even the one being brought over from AT&T. After an hour with the solutions specialist (total of three hours in the store) we believed we have accomplished our goal of upgrading one line and adding another line from AT&T. Boy were we wrong!!
10/7/16: 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Our phones were supposed to arrive at our house today. However, both required signature confirmation upon delivery and of course we were not home, so our phones were not delivered and since it was Friday they would not be delivered until the following Monday. After some time on the phone with the delivery companies (yes companies) we learned we could go pick up the phones at the warehouse. Note the plural form of Delivery Company. Now I ordered two identical phones at the same exact time at the same store. Verizon chose to ship the phones using two separate companies so that means we had to go to two separate locations to pick up the phones. So from 5:00 – 6:00 PM we drove to the FedEx store to pick up one phone.
10/7/16: 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM: Remember when we were told the activation process would be simple? Well that was another piece of fiction. My wife started to activate her phone (the one ported from AT&T) while I went out to find the UPS store that had my phone. I retrieved it a returned home almost an hour later to find my wife in tears as she was still trying to activate her phone and was on the phone waiting for (yep you guessed it) Verizon customer service to pick up. I then began the “easy” process of activating my new phone. Thankfully by 10:00 PM and after at least 5 “put on holds” Jared, the customer service agent was able to activate both of our phones.
10/8/16 12:30-1:30 I attempted to log in to view my new accounts on My Verizon only to find that I could only see my one line on the sub account. The other four lines were nowhere to be found. I decided to better my chances of talking to someone within the hour so I called customer service and activated Verizon chat. Within 10 minutes I was chatting with another Jared. After 20 minutes I was told that I needed to register a new account since my original four lines were on a sub account and this sub-account does not have an owner associated with it. With his help I began the registration process. We were quickly stonewalled because the account had been locked and I needed to contact customer service. Jared let me know that the only way to get the account unlocked was to visit a Verizon store. I pushed back on this as I was not interested in visiting the incompetence in the Burlington Mall again. I said there was a number to call and he said that they would tell me to go to the store as well.
10/8/16: 2:00 PM-4:30 PM Reluctantly I decided to go the Verizon store in Nashua, NH, to avoid the bumbling buffoons at the closer store that I had visited twice. I arrived at the store and told the solutions specialist my predicament and that I wanted my account unlocked. He looked a bit dumbfounded that I was told to come to the store to do this and let me know that no store has this capability. He directed me to call customer service (groan) and have them do it. So I sat in the Verizon store for another 45 minutes waiting for (guess who) Customer service to unlock my account, which they did immediately after answering. I was quickly able to register a line and now have access to my entire five lines.
I have spent nearly 14 hours dealing with various branches of the Verizon wireless customer service machine. I have told different portions of this story to my friends and have gotten this response, “Why are you still with Verizon?” I have NEVER had a customer experience that rivaled this one in frustration. Three of the six Verizon employees we have shared this journey with have in some way or another said this is an extreme situation and they apologized for the inconvenience. I promise if even the slightest problem occurs in the future I will be leaving Verizon along with my 5 lines and will be looking elsewhere for our wireless service.
