Employees of the month.

[13hooker]

I see that Verizon is the highest paid team on cellular service field. I know that because, I pay the bills. But many of your team members are less than average, in fact they are bad! But, you do have a few outstanding players that should be recognized for their effort in keeping customers like me from leaving.

  One such team member is Nicole [removed]. This worker, cares about her job and the people she helps unlike so many others that work for Verizon. Let me give you my story and tell you about the people you have working for you.

  First, I love Verizon Fios, but every year the cost goes up and becomes very expensive very quickly for me & my family. I have reached out to Verizon's retention department and they cannot work with me to come to any resolutions. So, I am left with no other choice but to switch & stay with cablevision.

  Secondly, I have had a Verizon as my cellular carrier for many years. I had Nextel before and when it combined with Sprint, it went downhill fast. So, I was left with no other choice but to switch to Verizon. I had a few problems after the first year and needed to reach out to Lisa [removed]& Lorine [removed] at the corporate office to get the issues resolved. No one along the way, had the ambition to help anyone or so it seemed over and over again.

  Now, about 9 months ago, my Razr Maxx cell phone could no longer hold a charge for more than four hours. Replacement batteries were not available. So, I went to the Verizon store in the Danbury mall, in Danbury CT and bought a new Samsung S9+. A very costly phone, but rated very high with a lot of options for now and into the future. As well as the best battery life of all the phones on the market at the time.

  Service on my new cell phone was amazing. I purchased a new vehicle in February 2017 and hooked it into to the blue tooth and the two together worked flawlessly until August 2018. In August, I started to notice that the antenna indicator on the screen on the vehicle could never reach five bars. At best it was four and many of my phone calls, I could not hear anyone, but they could hear me. So, I would hang up and as soon as I did, my service indicator would jump up two bars, but never to five bars. The service continued to get worse and worse. Mind you I love to travel on weekends for fun, I have 40,000 on my 2017 vehicle, so I don't stand still long & I only live 9 mile from my work so there not much of a commute.

  Starting in early November 2018, I could no longer make a call or receive a call without it being dropped. Didn't matter where I was or what I was doing. I could be driving, or walking or at home on the couch. The only thing I could tell you about how it worked was the indicator on the phone. if I had the best service out there, my indicator would show four bars and I needed to be with in 100 feet of a cell tower. If I was more than 100 feet from a tower, I had three bars. When I was making or receiving a call, the bars would drop one bar. If I was in a call and it dropped to two bars, I would not hear anyone, but they could hear me. When it dropped to one bar, the call was dropped.

  So, Starting out a few weeks ago, I began my new job with Verizon. I didn't technically work for the company nor get paid, but the many hours spent on the phone with Verizon felt like a full time job that was not a fun job to have.

  The first Verizon rep I spoke to was very good. She used Tech coach and connected to my phone and worked on my phone for over 45 minutes. (Back in February & March 2018, I had five bars of service at home) As I spoke to the rep, I only had two bars of service and at times disconnected her from tech coach when we tried to turn off WiFi. So, in the end, she did some sort of reset, that would take 15 minutes. She set up a call back from tech coach to see how the system was functioning. She was very pleasant and nice to work with, I am sorry I do not remember her name nor did I write it down. 

  Fifteen minutes passed and I get a call from Tech Coach, it's now a guy who knows nothing about why he is calling me.  I explain what was going on and tell him there is no change to my phone. He explains that I need to go to an authorized Verizon dealer and get a new sim card and if that doesn't work, I need to do a complete system reset of my phone back to factory setting. A short and quick phone call.

  So, now I have to travel for verizon thirty minutes away to the Danbury mall to get a new sim card. The people at the store are very helpful and they install the sim card and register the card. They explain there has been a run on sim cards, everyone is coming into get one, because Verizon tech support is sending them there. I leave the store and it's no better service. I make a few calls and they get dropped. They are even dropped in areas that I can see a cell tower and it was five bars of service in the same area in the past.

  When I get home I call Verizon and explain what is going on. I got a guy who tells me I need to do a factory reset on my phone. Nothing about backing anything up, just a simple reset back to factory settings. So, of course I follow Verizon's directions and reset my phone. When my phone comes back on, all my email connections, WiFi passwords, recent pictures, social media passwords are GONE! I call Verizon and explain the factory reset was complete. A very nice, but lost service lady helps me. She has me turn on my phone and attempts to log in to tech coach over and over again, but try as she did, three times, she could not get into tech coach. So, I needed to download "Rescue", so she could work off that app to get my phone up and running. But it seemed I knew more about this than she did. She was lost and even though I told her the make and model, it appeared she was lost. In the end, it was left to me to get it back to where it was.

  Well, with a new sim card and factory reset, you would think the world was a happy place once again. But nothing had changed. So, I called my co-workers or Verizon to explain what was going on and I was told I needed a new phone. They would send me a reconditioned Samsung S9+ and a new sim card overnight and I would just have to live thru it.

  So, I get my new phone without a new sim card and call Verizon and someone is kind enough to help me set it up. But they are shocked that many of my passwords and important information was gone. They told me to use my old sim card since that was still good. But the old sim card was gone and the one I just got from the Danbury store is all I had.  As are setting up my phone, they inform me that I didn't need a new phone or to do a factory reset. It's the local service that is having the issues. But she too cannot log into tech coach with the new phone. So, I ask in the end, if someone can follow up with me in 48 hours to see if tech coach now works and the problems are solved. So, my coworkers said they would put it in the computer. Then I spent more than five hours setting up my new phone which didn't work the same as my old phone.

  Well the new phone was set up and was working just like the old one. So, I called verizon again!, and explained what was going on. They said they would put in a repair ticket for my phone in my area and the areas I travel through. They too said it sounds like a network issue and not a phone issue.

  Now, remember Verizon doesn't employ anyone that knows how to read or write. So, each time I call I have to explain everything that I have done to date and most of the time they ask what the service person from did to resolve the issue. I do not think anyone read any notes in my file. Not even sure I have a file at this point.

  Now, Yesterday a tech coach called me back and yet again I had to go through everything once again, because you never get the same person twice (doesn't make sense, for someone who knows what your going through to call you back). But this time, I get a lady named Nicole [removed]. She seemed to know what she was talking about. She asked me if any of the prior techs did a simple connect thing. My answer was of course not. Nicole worked long and hard, she didn't have tech coach (of course), but I would do as she asked and she could view my screen. After she was working quite a long time and having to put up with me, the phone offered a new system update. So, we allowed it for 10 minutes to do the update, but I was afraid I was going to lose her and I was going to have to go over this entire thing again, so I tried to keep her on the line and thankfully the 10 minute up date only took five minutes. After all the up dating and what she could do, she called me on phone. My phone didn't ring, it was on my desk near a desktop computer and the speakers on the computer was making static noise as it was ringing. But the phone didn't ring. Nicole had left me a message, but that took over 5 hours for my voice mail to notify me. (by the way, we were using my home phone and the cell phone at the same time, just in case the call dropped, as usual). Then Nicole took me into connections and attempted to take me out of Global and put me into CDMA. But as I try the phone will not switch out, it stayed in Global. At one point it said it switched to CDMA, but after about five minutes it switched back to Global. At that point it was doing some really strange things that Nicole had never seen happen before and could not explain. After working with her for over two hours we were set. I asked if she could call me back in roughly 20 hours and check on the progress and see how it was going. I explained to her I do not want to go over this again. She said I would be the first call of her shift on saturday.

  Meanwhile in the night, my phone switched on its own out of CDMA and back to Global. Then I get a message from Verizon about what they found in searching out my problem. The message says " You have less than optimal service in your area and I am to turn on WiFi calling" and I can get a "Free" Network extender for my home. They have no intention of This was so GREAT, I had to share the video on Facebook with all my friends.  Note: My bill for my service doesn't have a area where I can ask for less than optimal service. That doesn't appear that Verizon is going the extra mile for its customers.

  Now I go out and use my phone today, it stayed in the CDMA setting and there indicator bars went from nothing to four, Never reaching five bars. It was like watching a roller coaster, always moving but never stopping. I made a few phone calls, and even when there were no bars, the service was clear, then there would be a little static and it would show four bars. But during the entire time I was able to keep a connection no matter if the WiFi was turned on or off.

  So, this afternoon my time, Nicole called me back. Shocking it was the same person who knew what my phone issues were. I was so relieved that I didn't have to go through this whole thing once again. She sounded like she was full of life and ready to solve any and all issues of mine. I shared the video that tech support sent to me and she seemed to be taken back and shocked that Verizon would admit they had less than optimal service and offered no explanation on when it would be fixed. She said she could send me a network extender, however I needed to know that there was an additional two year contract and the extender would only work from my home. If I was on the road, I may not have service.

 
  I did what I do best and I explained to her, knowing that it is not her that is creating the problems or failing to fix the problems. I know it is someone high up on the totem pole that will walk away with an 80 million dollar holiday bonus this year that is the problem.

  Nicole was kind enough to give me the "Win Back" part of Verizon, because I am about to leave. She also texted me there number:1-800-523-8573, but when she transferred me to them, it took over twenty minutes for them to answer. When I explained what was going on, they said I have the wrong department and they would connect me to the right department. So, they transferred me and I stayed on hold for 30 more minutes until the line went dead. Then I called the 1-800-523-8573 number and got a recording that said, they number I dialed was no longer in service and has been changed to 1-866-442-7953. So, I called that number and the automated system answered and there I stayed on hold for 30 minutes until the phone dropped my call again.

So, I cannot even begin to tell you how annoyed I am with Verizon! Paying thru the nose for terrible service, that Verizon even knows its bad and admits to it. I live 45 due north of New York City is a very populated area. I cannot believe that Verizon is doing nothing about it. But it is what they say there were doing, nothing.

  But even though this letter is way to long, out of the the entire process that has occurred, the first woman who did try and help me was very good, and Nicole who is outstanding and went the extra 100 miles for me. Nicole is an amazing person you have working there with you and I wanted you both to know that. I can complain better than most people, but when someone is willing to take the time and help me when I am asking for it, I am more than willing to let people know that this person deserves a whole lot of credit and will be recognized by me for it.

  I hope you move this letter along to the corporate for the failures of Verizon, but moreover, I want Nicole [removed] to know how much I appreciate what she did try and do for me to resolve my issues. None of your other representatives could come close to her and they didn't seem to care as she did about my concerns.

  Happy Trails & Happy Holidays,

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