Droid/verizon headaches

[Towelman]

Hello everyone,

Back in Nov.09 my family made a purchase of close to 800$ in our local Verizon store. At first I was glad to give Alltel the boot but now im wondering if we made the right decision. I purchased my 15yr old daughter a Motorola Droid along with one for myself banking on Motorola's reputation for quality products. I was well aware of purchasing a new hardly proven product could come with some growing pains and was prepared for this. Up until  now we have been very satisfied with the changes we made, the other day my daughters phone suddenly got amnesia it is like the blue screen of death but compact. So we did what anyone else would have done and made a trip to our local store to see what the verdict was going to be. Upon arrival we were greeted by one of the reps and he proceeded to evaluate our problem. This took all of about 3min. he then looked up and said that we would have to make an insurance claim on the product because of some cosmetic issues with the phone ie... some scratches around the LCD (not on the LCD) just some mild spots where the powder coating had been removed nothing major. He then handed me a brochure and stated that we should contact the insurance company immediately for a quick turn around. This kind of floored me I have never had a claim before and could see no damage other than what I previously mentioned and I to have similar damage on my Droid and have had no issues. I was getting hot under the collar to put it nicely and began to give the gentleman some feedback that he wasn't prepared for. This went on for about 20 min or so and I reached a boiling point and had to leave the store, you would think that Verizon had its customers in there best interest. I asked the rep about a loaner phone and he informed me that this service was not available, he also stated that the stores do not carry any warranty phones on hand but if they did this was certainly not a warranty case. I am very disappointed with the service that I received today at our local store and hope to never have a reason to go back. This seemed to be a default answer that the rep was programmed to convey. I know what your thinking typical teenager not having any responsibility but I can assure you all this is not the case. When we made our purchase I also bought the protective"skin" for both phones and of course later on she had to have different colors or whatever. One more note on her responsibility before she got her first phone I made her carry an egg in a zip loc bag for a month and told her if she could keep the egg from breaking then she could get a phone at the time she was 11 yrs old. If any of the Verizon employees read this note could you please give me some insight on this as you are about to loose a customer.

[logicman]

The rep sounds kind of clueless. A few more details about the symptoms your daughter's phone is exhibiting would be helpful. Have you tried popping the battery out and putting it back in? You may need to hold the power button down for a few seconds to get it to power up.

[bkfist]

I know you are asking your question in regards to poor customer service and what to do, but if you posted what your actual problem is with the phone, there is quite likely that someone here could ome up with an answer for your phone's problem. (Often the problem is caused by an errant program or corrupted data, and doing a factory reset and a format of your SD card will bring the phone back to "factory fresh" and resolve almost any problem.)

As to problems with customer service, I have two suggestions.  1.  Try a different store.  I've been to 3 different Verizon stores (not with problems, but to either purchase accessories or ask questions before I switched to Verizon for the Droid, and the level of knowledge definitely varied between the 3 stores, however in none of the stores was I in any way treated badly.  I do have experience with US cellular and Sprint also, at multiple stores, and can certainly attest to the fact that the quality of service was *dramatically* different from one store to the next.

Secondly, I think there is a different forum here on the Verizon boards dealing with customer service in general, where you might come up with better answers.  (I know these boards are browsed by Verizon employees, and I'm guessing the Android forums are perused by Android interested employees, and I would guess that the customer service/complaint boards would be watched by Verizon employees with more customer service related iinterests.