Letter to Tom Pica

[evil_network]

Thought I would share this letter. This gentleman is apparently in charge of the "Customer Experience" at Verizon. Doubt anyone will respnd to it, or anythign will become of it, but never the less, I sent it.

Mr. Pica,

I live in Bozeman, MT. An area where our only two choices are Alltell/AT&T and Verizon. While we have been quite happy with Alltell's level of service, as the time has drawn very near with AT&T, we grew scared of getting caught into a maelstorm and decided to switch to Verizon. This experience to say largely has been worse than anything we have ever experienced, both with the phones, and with he level of treatment we have received in the corporate owned store itself.

Rather than go into a tyrade of everything that has occurred, let me simply give you one tine piece of the story. The Samsung Fascinate. I arrived at the Samsung Fascinate after a faulty Droid 2 whose keyboard wouldn't actuate properly. (My fault according to your corporate store). Then by way of a Motorola Droid X who suffered very poorly at the hands of a 2.1 to 2.2 upgrade. The 4 days I spent on the phone with Motorola before finally giving up and returning this device and canceling the line it was under were the most hair pulling days I think I have had in years.

The Fascinate came to me by way of Amazon Wireless after I was told about it, and shown it in the Corporate store. The corporate employee stated to me, and I quote "This will be updated to 2.2 software in late November or the beginning of December.

Fantastic! I loved the screen size, the quality, so I ordered one from Amazon because I didn't want to be treated poorly in the store again. Needless to say, it was and hasn't been rosy. The first unit I got from Amazon was apparently one of 10,000 in a batch that were unable to update from DH12 to DI01 firmware (according to a Verizon tier 2 support person). In the process of finding this out, one of your tier 2 support people told me that my corporate store had the capability to push the update manually and they could solve it. After making a trip there, waiting for 45 minutes, a rather large fellow proceded to tell me and my wife that we could simply do this ourselves at the Verizon website. When I asked him exactly where it could be done, he didnt have an answer, and left us standing there for another 20 minutes while he looked at the phone.

When he returned, he was still insistent that I could solve my own problem by taking the phone home, hooking it to my computer and downloading the update myself. When I pressed him for an exact website address in which to do that, he of course could not give me one.

I returned home really angry and proceeded to get someone else from tier two support back on the phone. This person finally listened to the issue, did a little research and discovered that our store wasn't trained in nor did they have the capabilities to do a manual push to fix the problem, yet there isn't any natural way to do it over the web either as the gentleman in the store had insisted.

Needless to say, I got a replacement phone from Amazon within a couple of days that had the correct firmware. In the meantime, I purchased a Samsung Media dock. Now you can imagine my distaste when I discovered the media dock isn't fully functional because the telephone doesn't have up to date 2.2 software. I have to tell you that there is no better experience than throwing away the money you earn. In fact, I love doing it!

So here I am today, January 10th. I have a phone that still has problems with its GPS, I have an accessory that wont work because the phone doesn't have updated software, and after searching high and low, I find no communications from Verizon of when or how you or Samsung might fix this phone. I get instead a of variety if answers. The most obvious lies always come from the corporate store. Go Figure. I guess people will say anythign when they are paid on commission.

AT&T wont be making their full switchover here until the end of February which means I still have a working contract with them I am paying on while I have service with you. At this point, since what I have experienced seems to be the best user experience Verizon can give me, I wont have any problem paying my ETF's, and taking my chances with AT&T. At least they seem to ACT like they want my business.

Being treated rudely and with disrespect by your corporate store (and then filing a complaint about it that went unanswered), dealing with devices that didn't work, or failed upgrades, etc etc just seems to be a little too much. I would certainly hope that if you are the person in charge of the customer experience as your title denotes, that you will learn that the customer experience embodies so much more than just the cool features of the next phone, or how much speed your network is capable of.

Regards,

Ellen E.& Joe{edited for privacy}

[cmckay]

My experience has been very similar. Hopefully you will get some sort of response beyond the normal form letter.

[yoworm]

Great letter unfortunately Verizon does not care about one or even a thousand customers or we would be experiencing better customer service they know they have you once you sign that contract.

I would hope however the respectfully written letter of your bad experience would not fall on a deaf ear at that level good luck.  I would suspect that many fascinate owners would soon follow your format and write a letter if you have a favorable experience.  Again good luck

[micdawg]

It's amazing how many people have experiences like this.  I have had the same sort of experiences.  I guess I am just hoping they come to their senses before they leave me no other choice but to ETF.  I have several friends/family who have already ETF'd due to verizons terrible customer service.  Hopefully they start acting like a real respectable company.

[evil_network]

Just thought I would post back that I have been contacted by our local regional corporate store manager relating to the bad experiences we have had on multiple occassions in the store. We've had some nice chats. I would honestly like to believe that some kind of difference might be made at our local store as to how customers are dealt with and treated, but who knows.

As for the Samsung Fascinate, my biggest complain was GPS lock and lack of 2.2 software that I was told in the store would come at end of November early December. I do love my Fascinate, it's a great phone. But the Samsung dock I bought wont work with it because it is not on 2.2 yet and other software I would like to have on my phone isn't available to me because it doesnt have 2.2, so we came to an amicable agreement for a Droid X. Defenitely not as a high quality fo phone as the SF but useable.

Overall though, my wife and I both feel that if we go back into the store again and get any kind of experience such as we have had in the past two months, we will simply ETF our contract and go elsewhere. It;s not fun to fork over a thousand bucks but we would rather do that than to pay a company to get treated poorly.

Lastly, neither of the executives I contacted responded, I guess a single customer isn't worth much worry to them. Shame.

--Joe

[steveanderson13]

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evil_network wrote:

Just thought I would post back that I have been contacted by our local regional corporate store manager.

Lastly, neither of the executives I contacted responded, I guess a single customer isn't worth much worry to them. Shame.

--Joe

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Joe, I can definitely relate and wouldn't refute anything you have posted but isn't it likely that the executives you contacted relayed your info to the local regional corporate store manager who in turn contacted you.  I would hope so.  

[papa_leo]

I have to agree that Verizon's CS quality went downhill in the recent years. Try to search YouTube for "Verizon Sucks" and you will notice almost 800 videos with an average viewer count of 1000. That is 800,000 viewers that become aware about poor Verizon service and that's so many of existing customers Verizon is about to lose or new to inquire. More videos like that and Verizon will have to listen to people if they would like to sustain the same level of grow as they experience in the past years.

I am generally happy with the latest DL update as it addressed the most important (for me at least) GPS issue. However, I am still P I S S E D at Verizon for missing to deliver 2.2. I know it wasn't officially promised on the contract but I am just like so many others were lied that Froyo will be delivered by November's end. And those promises were coming from all levels of corporate store clerks, managers, Best Buy sale folks, and Verizon's own customer, sale, and tech support personnel. I have 4 more lines on my family plan and originally, I was thinking to switch all of them to Fascinate but now since seeking a level of support that Verizon provides, I think I will give Sprint a second chance especially that their plans are MUCH CHEAPER.

[silver6055]

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papa_leo wrote:

I have to agree that Verizon's CS quality went downhill in the recent years. Try to search YouTube for "Verizon Sucks" and you will notice almost 800 videos with an average viewer count of 1000. That is 800,000 viewers that become aware about poor Verizon service and that's so many of existing customers Verizon is about to lose or new to inquire. More videos like that and Verizon will have to listen to people if they would like to sustain the same level of grow as they experience in the past years.

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Videos on youtube really don't matter except in exceptional cases.  Searching for both "AT&T sucks" and "Sprint Sucks" show about 600 videos each, one of the AT&T ones has over 90,000 hits.

Cellular plans and phones can be expensive and complex, both keep changing, happiness with your cellular provider is unusual.

[papa_leo]

To silver6055

What's your honest take on Verizon's reps lying  to consumers about availability of Froyo on Fascinate only to stop people from cancelling their contracts within 30 days of trail periods? Shouldn't there be any corporate responsibility for words that comes from their own employees?

Even if my contract never said that Froyo will be delivered within any specified period of time. I was told multiple times that it is coming any day...since October.

Working in advertising industry for years, when on business and then I speak to my customers, I am representing not just mine but my company point of view. Should I lie, mislead, or dishonestly represented facts to customers, they feel that they have rights to argue a business practice that my company carries out and have rights to cancel existent contract even if there is no assumption to that. Don't you think that the same should be applied to the cellular companies that provide services to us?

[silver6055]

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papa_leo wrote:

To silver6055

What's your honest take on Verizon's reps lying  to consumers about availability of Froyo on Fascinate only to stop people from cancelling their contracts within 30 days of trail periods? Shouldn't there be any corporate responsibility for words that comes from their own employees?

Even if my contract never said that Froyo will be delivered within any specified period of time. I was told multiple times that it is coming any day...since October.

Working in advertising industry for years, when on business and then I speak to my customers, I am representing not just mine but my company point of view. Should I lie, mislead, or dishonestly represented facts to customers, they feel that they have rights to argue a business practice that my company carries out and have rights to cancel existent contract even if there is no assumption to that. Don't you think that the same should be applied to the cellular companies that provide services to us?

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Of course, you had a bad experience and that shouldn't have happened, and of course you are not the only one with a bad Verizon experience.   I was just reacting to your youtube-videos-will-cause-lots-of-people-to-leave  comments.  My view is that grass isn't greener elsewhere, it is pretty much the same.

Because of this, get one year contracts when available so it is easier to switch to whoever has the best phone/plan etc at the time you need it.  Just don't expect uniformally better customer service elsewhere, much depends on the individual rep that you talk to, and just how much the current rules prevent or allow his/her flexibility.

Should it be like this?  No.  Will complaining on the forum change it?  No.  Will anything change it?  Probably not, with the possible exception of finding that all cellphones cause cancer and the industry gets banned.