What customer service?!

[krishu916]

To Whom It May Concern:

I have never experienced the level of gross incompetence that I came to deal with regarding Verizon on June 20, 2018. What was to be a simple procedure of turning in a rental router to remove the rental fee from my monthly bill, turned into a multi-day nightmare. 

After turning in my router, instead of waiving the rental fee from my future billing, my service was cancelled entirely. Upon receiving the email that my service was being discontinued, I contacted Verizon to advise of the error that occurred and re-instate my service. I was advised that my service was cancelled in error, fair enough, but that my service was no longer available. 50/50 for $39.99 a month was a promotional rate for 2 years, that I have only had for 1 year, and was now $89.99 a month. 

I was then advised that a new service could be placed for 100/100 for $39.99 a month. I agreed to the new service and advised that I needed the service re-instated immediately. 

I was told that a tech would be able to come to my house around 5:30 pm and that I would receive a confirmation email. The confirmation email that was sent indicated that a tech was schedule to come to my home the next day 06/21 between 10 am and 12 pm. I made it very clear to the first representative that service needed to be re-instated 06/20 and not 06/21 as my husband and I work from home and this would cause us to miss a day of pay each. 

Around 2:30 pm I started a chat on Verizon's website with a service representative to clear the confusion and get my appointment back for 5:30 pm 06/20. I was advised that this was correct and a tech would be coming to my home within 3 hours and 30 minutes, I thanked the representative for helping clarify and put me at ease knowing our household would be back up and running by days end. 

Approximately 15-20 minutes later I received a call from Verizon stating that my appointment was not able to be met and the only available time was for 06/21 between 10 am and 12 pm.

I repeated that this was not conducive to my schedule and the inconvenience of constant rescheduling was not appreciated. I was then told that because the order was placed that day, they did not have the ability to service it until the following day. I re-iterated that the service was placed because of Verizon's error and not my own and that I should not be inconvenienced any further due to an error that should have easily been resolved. Service was immediately turned off without a tech coming to my home, why could service not be turned back on?

After repeating myself several times to no avail - I was asked if I could be placed on a brief hold. Verizon called me, and now I'm on hold?

My call was escalated to a "manager" Rich. As a manager myself, I appreciated that my account was now hopefully going to be getting the attention it needed to have this resolved quickly.

I had to explain the entire situation to Rich, a few times, before he understood what happened. In his words he was "baffled" and could not understand how an error like this could have been made and apologized. He then inquired if I would be interested in adding cable to my order - when I stated that I was not interested and simply needed the internet re-instated at my home, he stated he could add a basic cable package for a low rate to my account. I then became even more frustrated and advised that I would not be adding cable, that FIOS needed to be at my house by the end of business and that I was EXTREMELY disappointed with my experience. Rich was then "nice" enough to tell me that the service/set up charge for my new service was going to be waived - which is LITERALLY the least Verizon could do as a new service should not have been needed to be set up to begin with. 

The call in total was 40 minutes of no assistance, no ability to schedule a tech to come to my house, just excuses and half-hearted apologies. I have never been in a situation where the customer was made to suffer the consequences of a company's error without some sort of reconciliation. I have now lost all respect for Verizon. 

A simple error that could have and should have been resolved within minutes, has inconvenienced myself, caused a loss of income for my family, and has put Verizon at the top of least customer friendly companies I have ever encountered. 

A final note I would like to add, at the end of our pointless conversation, Rich stated he hoped he provided "5 star service". Having experience in working with customers and knowing that the goal is to provide consistent superior service, you also need know how to read your customer. "5 star service" is not remotely close to what I experienced, and in hearing that comment from Rich, I was thoroughly disgusted. It may be procedure for mindless robot employees to state that line at the end of every call, but it is insulting and infuriating. When the representative spent the entire phone call making the customer feel like this error was their fault, trying to sell additional product, and advising that there was no resolution available, asking if they provided "5 star service" is a figurative spit in the face and shows that Verizon holds no accountability for their mistakes and poor service.

** As if the above pathetic display of "service" was not enough, the insisted upon appointment window of 10 am - 12 pm was DELAYED. The Tech called at 12:40 pm to state that he JUST got the order and was on his way...

I thoroughly hope you reconsider your employee training, resolution techniques, and fail-safe procedures to avoid this nightmare from happening to another paying customer.