Once upon a time, a woman foolishly thought when it was time to upgrade her phone, she could do it with ease. She was mistaken. What ensued was a colossal inconvenience of, granted, first-world proportions, but emblematic of a corporate giant’s disregard for and inability to respond to a long-time customer’s simple needs. The process began approximately ten days ago, and as of this moment, has not been seen through to any reasonable person’s definition of resolution. Yesterday, I took to Twitter to vent.* (And just to get this disclaimer out of the way, in my first tweet, I say it’s taken 40 hours. That’s not quite accurate. But it’s close, and it could very easily reach that point. At the moment, it has taken over 20 hours.)
Soooo, basically, I was being handled by a bunch of different people who were each asking me to tell them the story from the beginning, and then attempted to usher me offline into a private forum so that I would not continue to be pissed off at them in public. Fine. I’ll play. Moving on to Direct Messaging now…
(*You’ll start seeing typos from me now. These aren’t characteristic, but I hope they’ll be forgiven, as I was beginning to feel stabby. One could argue that when stabby, one should be MORE careful about spelling and grammar, but that isn’t how it worked yesterday.)
Note the lame attempt at diffusing my irritation with humor. Not in the mood, thanks.
So, in addition to having a different person answering me each time, I have to work pretty hard to get them to address the fact that I can’t order a Verizon phone in a Verizon store. But they do. Fine.
So, it’s possible I don’t really have a “large” audience. Except in my dreams. Well. Maybe some of them are large. My son, for example is 6’4″. Whether or not he is in my audience is debatable.
Anyhow, I love how *JJM sends me the link on HOW TO ORDER A PHONE ONLINE. That link, by the way, just takes me to the Verizon website where I can begin the process of ordering a Note 7 online. Again. Not troubleshooting. Not help forums that relate to the problems I’ve been having. Just, “Here’s where you can order a Note 7 from the very beginning! Because I am a robot and you are an idiot!!!”
Reminds me of my ex-dermatologist, about whom I wrote last year – who I fired for several reasons, but here’s a gem that didn’t make it into that post. He thought I needed to be shown what the word “damp” meant. He told me to put lotion on after my shower while my skin was still damp. And then at night, I should moisten my skin before I reapply the lotion. And because I wouldn’t likely to be able to figure that one out on my own, he walked over to the sink and turned on the water, put a few drops of water on his forearm with his other hand and showed me his damp forearm. “Like this,” he said, holding his arm out for me to gaze at in awestruck wonder.
Back to Verizon…
For shits and giggles, when I was first attempting to order this damn phone, I took screen shots of some of the bullshit I kept having to deal with from “Chat” on the Verizon website. This was the less annoying stuff.
“Why are you taking screenshots of this?” my husband said. “What is the point?” he asked. “What will that help?” he said. Silly man. Oh, you silly, silly man.
Anyhow, back to last night’s correspondence, if you can call it that, with Verizon Customer Service…
So, it appears that *NRT sort of gets it. But then *NRT is gone and *JJT is dealing with me. But at least *JJT asks for more of the story and doesn’t say, “What seems to be the problem? Would you like to order a new phone?”
So, *JJT seems to be with me too, right? He’s asking intelligent questions and appears to understand my issue. At least my phone issue.
So, now I’ve been handed over to *RS who has my phone number and PIN for the account. He’s asking for the name on the account, and I assume he is going to attempt to make things right. It is also 2 a.m., and I’m exhausted. So I get this parting shot off before I go to sleep:
If you were me, would you stay with Verizon, I asked? After not mowing the lawn, not spending time with my kid on the last day of his summer vacation, after work for a client I didn’t get to do, after hours and hours of aggravation for a fucking phone equalling more than a part-time job would have taken me… what do I get from *RS?
Well.
Here’s the message to which I awakened this morning.
Isn’t that sweet? They want to ship me the accessory I never wanted in the first place that only popped up AS A FREE OFFER ANYWAY because I was ordering an accessory I DID want and was paying for, but then Verizon was charging me for the accessory I NEVER WANTED TO BEGIN WITH SO I HAD TO GO BACK AND REMOVE IT FROM MY CART AND THAT WAS WHEN MY CART WAS EMPTIED AND I WAS KICKED OUT OF THE SITE AND I HAD TO START ALL THE FUCK OVER AGAIN AND TO MAKE UP FOR THIS BULLSHITTERY AND MORE THAN NOW 25 HOURS OF MY TIME AND GOD KNOWS HOW MANY POINTS IN MY BLOOD PRESSURE THEY ARE OFFERING TO SEND ME THE FUCKING ACCESSORY I DO NOT WANT FOR FREE.
Would you like to know the best part about it? The allegedly free accessory is – are you sitting down? –
NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THE NOTE 7.
Do you understand me? It is a charging cable for an iPhone. AN iPHONE.
The only reason I initially clicked to accept the offer was because my husband and kids have iPhones and I thought, “Sure – it’s free. They could probably use an extra cable.”
So Verizon is offering to make it up to me with a free accessory that does not even work with my phone that I never wanted in the first place. How does that sound?
Welp. Here’s how I responded to that message.
lesliefmiller says
I’ll take the charger.
Seriously, though: AT&T and an iPhone. Get.
Chris says
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to write one of these about my recent experiences with Honda, who have basically sucked what tiny scrap of belief in the general goodness of humanity out through my eardrums with a straw and used it as ink to print me invoices of stuff I have to pay them for.
To summarize my feelings, and to reference case law on the subject, I invite you to please watch four minutes of this episode of Columbo (the source of all insight and wisdom), beginning at the indicated point: https://youtu.be/SvtQcLNVpiI?t=3m48s. As you watch, please imagine that I am Gene and Robert Conrad is every person I’ve dealt with at Honda.
A few minutes later in the episode, Robert Conrad kills Gene. Which is only marginally better than I feel Honda has treated me.
Aliza Worthington says
Yeah, but if everyone at Honda looked like Robert Conrad, and wore pants as tight, would least that make it a little better? And that is one of my very favorite Columbo episodes…and sorry about your ear…