PSA: Verizon can and will disappoint you at *EVERY* possible juncture. To potential customers of either Verizon or Visible*, look elsewhere.
*(Verizon's desperate PR resuscitation attempt)
Mad? Me too. File a complaint with the FCC!
TLDR: Wasted time (8+ hours), and money, trying to upgrade to a new plan as my grandfathered plan had become far more expensive than originally thought due to them invoking special clauses to bring the price over $100 more than what it used to be. Additionally, discovered that there was insurance on my plan that I did not sign up for and that Verizon had by opted us in to a for-profit data mining scheme. I figured things happen and they'll just tell me it's my fault for not diligently enough looking at my bill. I decide not to pick a fight and spend my entire Saturday in a corporate Verizon store while on the phone with customer loyalty (their recommendation as they can't do anything). I have over 4 phone calls totaling over 8 hours throughout the day just for them to switch me over to the new myPlan. After all this they offer me a $10/line fee if I sign up for autopay like this its some sort of gracious discount. I plan to buy a new phone anyway, and they offer me credit alongside this to do so. Even though as I told the rep, it would just be cheaper to buy the phone outright unlocked and take it to AT&T who were able to provide me a quote while on the phone (I actually left the verizon store while on hold for a customer loyalty supervisor drove to an AT&T corporate store, walked in got a quote, and left, before that supervisor picked up). He insists its a great deal for now and in a few days he will follow up with more but for now just take the phone. I go, get the phone, a google pixel 9 pro, only to find out that Verizon permanently disables a native feature on the Pixel that is absolutely crucial to my use case. There is no way to undo this and you cannot pay them any fee or beg support to help, it is permanently locked in this one regard. Most other major carriers do not do this, and this would definitely would not have happened had I just ignored the supervisor and gone and bought the phone elsewhere, but I wanted to think Verizon had some good left in them. Now I get to return the phone, try to recoup the discount or what I can from it, return all the accessories I excitedly bought, and go through this entire process again. But I' d rather not. So after almost 30 years, I am going to be leaving Verizon over their inability to treat their customer with respect at any step in this journey.
FULL POST:
At this point, I write this post with little hope of resolving any issues I may have had nor in hopes of even receiving a response, but rather to provide an honest account of the of failings on Verizon's part, which constitute near FCC violations at every level.
A customer for over 27 years, I have no reason to change. Not because I love Verizon or its service, but because it is okay and enough of an inconvenience to change carriers than I would like. After reviewing my bill, I realized alternatives might certainly work for me, so I hopped on over
I don't love my phone carrier, but who does. I've been with Verizon 27 years and it has been just okay enough that I could not justify the hassle of switching carriers given the plethora of lines, devices, and family members under our account. Our bill has been going up, so I recently reviewed it. We were grandfathered in to 'the new Verizon unlimited Plan', which was advertised as a one-size-fits-all easy base payment of $110 and an additional $20 for each line on the account. Due to a slow increase in the price of each line over time, as well as additional service fees, and insurance on lines I know I did not ask for the bill was a whole lot higher than this. I can almost let that go because I just didn't want to deal with it. So I decided to give in and un-grandfather myself from this contract. In trying to upgrade, I called both the customer loyalty department and went in to corporately-owned stores. Saturday alone, I spent 6.5 hours on the phone with them, frequently being put on hold and then given no new information. I didn't even care at this point, I just wanted to upgrade my lines, which is something you'd think they want to aide me in? Don't they want those pesky grandfathered customers to switch over to their more efficient pocket-milking machine? And there I am actively *trying* to do this and they tell me I cannot until the end of my billing cycle. Fine. Except, over the phone, I am told that customer service will push this through. They try to - and fail and place me on an additional hold. In this time frame, I leave the store, drive to an AT&T store and get a quote in real time. I relay this to the representative who ensures me they are doing everything they can to help. They have pushed it through and can offer me $10 a line if I sign up for autopay, like that is some sort of premium discount for my time and not a discount so readily available they actually by default advertise that as the price per line in store. I am offended by this.
By now, I have spent my entire Saturday trying to change a phone bill to a plan Verizon is pushing me to switch to whilst simultaneously making it incredibly difficult and frustrating to do so. I am placed on hold again as they try to craft a new better offer. Eventually they offer me a one time $10 credit, and a loyalty discount of $10/line for a year. I had previously I mentioned to them I was in the market for a new phone and wanted to purchase a Pixel 9 Pro. I typically buy my phones outright as it has historically been faster and easier. This has been another headache as you are given different promotions in-store, online, and over the phone. I understand each having their own competitive edge, but these were all corporate entities, offering me different deals within a 48-hour window, to the point where you can't really keep track of what you are looking for. They mentioned my line was due for an upgrade and I already had an $800 credit towards it. I asked if they had the pixel in stock as I was just going to purchase it outright, at least I could get a new phone for myself to sweeten a sour of a day. I am put on hold for something close to another hour as they connect me to a supervisor, who upon connecting, seems to have no knowledge of the case other than a brief synopsis and comes off rushed and bothered. At this point I'm frustrated. I just want to buy a phone and upgrade my lines. This is easy money for Verizon, why do they insist on making it so difficult.
To my surprise and pleasure, the supervisor offers to comp the phone, which honestly I really appreciated, he grants credits towards the line and waives the activation fee. I had the same old phone for years prior to this, so this was a welcome surprise. They push forward will the bill and promotion, which by the way is still over $100/month more than what AT&T quoted me for the same coverage, however Verizon had said they would get back to me in 3/4 business days with a potential additional loyalty discount for having been with them for 27 years so I thought what the heck, let's see what they can offer as a few more days isn't really much in the scheme of all this.
I pick up a case and screen protector, get everything set up, and begin to transfer over when I notice something. My device is locked. I am not talking about a carrier/SIM-lock, but rather a bootloader lock. I initially thought maybe I have to pay it off in full, wait for the payment plan to be over, or wait 60 days similar to their carrier lock. But no. Verizon permanently and fully shuts you down from even making this choice yourself. You don't even have access to it by default on a pixel, you have to very intentionally enable a section of the settings just to then get access to the option to enable it. But nonetheless it is there for the users who need it and Google wants to provide secure opportunity for users who wish to enable this to do so. I am a developer and my prime reason for purchasing a Pixel is the native support it offers for secure bootloader unlocking. This is a critical selling point for me, and I imagine many others, otherwise Google would not put such effort into creating and maintaining this aspect of the device. So why on God's green Earth would Verizon undermine this? Now the only way to unlock the bootloader will result in far more potential security and compatibility issues than before. Verizon gains almost nothing from this. Most other carriers still maintain a carrier lock while offering OEM/bootloader unlocking. If is the position of Verizon that they cannot do this without risking some element of their business I must ask the obvious. Why is everyone else able to do it? Are you saying that the largest carrier in the United States, which receives over $200 million annually in federal subsidies, is so insecure compared to their competitors they cannot offer basic features phones ship with and must disable them permanently as a result? Is your leadership truly this incompetent? If I were a shareholder, this would alarm me.
In my research through all of this I also learned Verizon has quietly begun a data-mining for profit operation and by default for many customers has opted them in, meaning they aren't really notified of it in any meaningful way (i'm sure they got an 'updated privacy policy' email) and then their lack of objection is taken as a perverse form of consent to sell private information such as call log, location history, and more to advertisers. This is known as their 'custom experience program'. Since this is a place for feedback, here is mine: My 'custom experience' felt like being dropped out of a plane without pants, only to land arse-down atop a thorned obelisk, while Hans Vestberg watched on, photographing the ordeal to make a scrapbook of it later.
I did not originally wish to purchase the phone through them, but thought surely there can't be a catch to this, they are trying to make things right! Verizon has shown me that with every benefit of doubt I am willing to give them, they will prove me wrong and vindicate my loathing for them once again.
The most annoying part is the time wasted. Had it been made clear that this was the case, I would've said 'eh' and gone with the plan change, buying the phone elsewhere. But now I have to return this, go through the pain I went through with customer service all over again, in hopes of recouping any of the promotions I used. I spent good money on a screen and lens protector as well as a new phone case too. And the Saturday I thought was wasted but somewhat saved by this phone, it now turns out was indeed wasted, and I have to waste more of my time trying to fix problems created by corporate obfuscation and an unwillingness to be honest with their customers.
All I wanted to do was give you money and you somehow managed to make that maddening as well.
Side note: There is a convenient lack of a proper location for this post. You would think with a company of this size, there would be a place for general feedback, outside of the hyper-specific pre-drawn borders our benevolent corporate overlords offer. If I had to guess though, a true repository for customer feedback could never exist, as Verizon *knows* that if that were ever offered, it would likely trigger the heat death of the universe, given the concentration of pure rage it would host. How nice of them ! At every level Verizon is entirely aware of what they are doing. Their business model is now, more than ever, built on smoke and mirrors. They will do the bare minimum at any given juncture, and somehow still find a way to fist you.
