My wife and I went into what we thought was a brand new Verizon corporate store by our house on Black Friday to get a deal for our son on the iPhone6s that was being advertised. When we drove up the store looked identical to the other two corporate stores in our city so we assumed it was a corporate store. Nowhere on the outside of the building was anything that mentioned the store was just an authorized retailer and there were no signs inside the building that were visible at a glance either. We went in and met with a gentleman who walked us through the entire order process. As we were getting ready to order the phone my wife noticed that his pricing sheet had "Cellular Sales" at the top and not Verizon Wireless.
Having worked for Verizon in the past I knew this meant they were a 3rd party retailer so I asked the sales rep if they were a corporate store. He hesitated for a minute and then told me that they weren't. I advised him that we only deal with the corporate stores because the 3rd parties tend to either inflate the costs or stick extra contracts on you. He assured me that they had even better pricing than Verizon corporate stores and that they didn't add any riders to the contract. He then advised me that they were usually the ones showing Verizon customer care reps how to do their jobs and the customer care reps typically didn't know much about their own products. I found that offensive since I have been a care rep in the past and know the amount of training they go through to learn their products. I also recall that over half my calls were dealing with trying to fix mistakes that these types of stores made.
I told him their store was misleading since it didn't say they were an authorized retailer and he pointed me to a very small sign on the door (taped on and looked like an advertisement) that said they were Cellular Sales. It was not plainly visible when walking by.
We hesitantly allowed him to place the order since we were there. We asked about cancellations and he said we could cancel at any time by just giving him a call. We went home and checked the website and the iPhone 6s was $60 cheaper direct from Verizon. I immediately called the store back and talked to a second gentleman. I told him that we wanted to cancel the order and order directly through Verizon. He then told me that I would need to call Verizon customer care to cancel the order and there was nothing they could do. I called customer care and was told that since a 3rd party placed the order it took a bit of time to cancel. It took 3 days and 3 phone calls to customer care to finally get it cancelled and by that time the Black Friday deal was gone. Customer care did a great job setting us up with a Cyber Monday deal on our account which was a little better, but we ended up having to let the original phone come to this 3rd party store anyhow. I now have to go back in there this Friday to pick up the phone and deal with this unethical and dishonest store.
All other stores in our city with the exception of this one and one other new store clearly indicate on the side of the building that they are an authorized premium retailer. I recall in the past that they had to be clearly marked as a retailer and not a corporate store. Did Verizon change the rules for these stores? They are completely misleading customers.
