Three Hours of Agony with Support

[dazedandamused]

Early yesterday I attempted to get Verizon to port my monthly # to a pre-paid device. They assured me this was easy to do over the phone, which is why I did not head to the local Verizon store where there is often a wait. I have since spent three hours on the phone, maybe half of that waiting for someone to pick up, and this is what they have accomplished:

• Three regular Verizon reps, while pleasantly chatty and apparently competent, were unable to properly communicate my request to the Prepaid support. I had to correct prepaid support three times and felt that if I had not, they would have really botched this.
• Three times when calling *611 on the prepaid device, I was unable to reach a human despite my best efforts navigating the auto attendant. I kid you not, if you dial this and press a bunch of keypad #s in the frustration, the auto attendant says, "We're sorry you're having trouble. Goodbye." And hangs up. This hang up happened to me twice.
• One rep claimed he was trying to contact the former owner of my prepaid device (a family member) and conference this person in. He said the numbers he dialed did not work even though I called the family member a few minutes before just fine on those numbers. This meant he had to stop our work and I had to figure out another way and then call back and wait at least 10 minutes for support to pick up.
• Three reps so far have told me the process was in motion. Last night, after 17 minutes on the phone, I had a guy who assured me he was going to take care of me. He said he needed to go through a couple of departments and it would be a few minutes. 10 minutes later a lady with a thick accent who seemed to have no clue what was already in progress began asking me for an MEID. I had to re explain to her what I wanted to accomplish and just as I switched hands to get the MEID, I accidentally hung up on her. Not wanting to face the minimum 10-minute hold (day or night), I drank a bunch of beers and gave up.
• This morning I called again and restarted the process. Once again, regular Verizon support had to meet up with Prepaid. When they passed me to prepaid, again the person did not understand the nature of the switch. They also did not speak very good English so I barely understood them. They said that for some reason my monthly phone number was in some sort of limbo now and that they had to wait an hour or two before the process could continue, so I needed to call back then.
• I told him I was not calling back and asked him to call me back, otherwise I was going to cancel all my lines and buy Tracfones. He assured me he would call me back.
• Meanwhile, my wife calls and says her Verizon phone (the one whose number I am trying to port) has stopped working.
• Two hours later, I have not heard from Verizon. Did they forget me? Did they not write down the number? Did they not hear my threat?

Goodbye, Verizon. I am porting my numbers to Google Voice and ordering three Tracfones. My wife gets VirginMobile pre-paid now and we're selling the Verizon prepaid device on eBay. Whee!

[dazedandamused]

Update and final blow: I called them back in one last attempt and finally landed a pre-paid rep who got something done. After more than ONE HOUR she got my number ported. I was so excited. But when I asked her to ask her supervisor to credit me $45 on the pre-paid plan for MORE THAN FOUR HOURS of on the phone working with Verizon support in the past two days, the supervisor refused to credit it. I told the nice lady helping me that was unacceptable and no way to treat loyal customers who have been poorly treated already. I then told her that I would not be funding this pre-paid phone because I am never giving Verizon Wireless a cent of money again. I'm selling the phone on ebay and using other pre-paid providers for our four lines.

I felt bad for all the work she did, but she was just another victim of a greedy company. Money is the only language they speak. Truly an epic fail, Verizon.