This past May, I gave in to the lure of wireless phone service and signed up with Verizon. At the time, they were offering a promotion: 2000 free nationwide weekend minutes. So I signed up for that and the 250 minute regional plan, regional being AZ, CA, NM, NV, and a little corner of UT that I’ll probably never visit. Yay, virtually free long distance on the weekends since I would never come close to using 2000 minutes.
Fast forward to September. Thanks to various friends I’ve made out of state, my long distance minutes finally exceeded 250. This was reflected in an extra $65 in basic usage and long distance charges on my bill. After verifying that these long distance calls did indeed take place during the weekends and that they did indeed fall well short of 2000 minutes, I called Verizon customer disservice to protest. The girl I talked to (whose name I should have gotten, dammit) credited me the $65, but told me that she would have to contact the promotions department to see if they would give me the 2000 minutes deal. She didn’t know if they would give it to me or not, since the promotion ended in July. To this I replied that they damn well better, since I have a receipt indicating that I signed up under the 2000 free weekend minute promotion.
After a week, I haven’t heard from this customer disservice rep whose name I forgot to get. So, I called back and talked to a person whose name I did get. She told me she’d call back after she heard back from promotions. A couple of weeks later, no call (I would’ve called back much sooner, but after 9/11 I kind of neglected my own issues for a while). So, I called back and played a little phone tag over the following days with no resolution.
All right, enough of this crap. Friday after work I went to the Verizon store with my receipt and bills. I was hoping there would be other customers there to hear me complain, since I figured the Verizon staff would be more responsive if that was the case. Sadly, there was only one customer who left the store a few seconds after I went in. There is never anyone in these stores when I walk by or go in. How do they stay in business?
Hell with it. I went to the customer service desk anyway and told the girl there of my plight. Sadly, she informed me that the 2000 minute promotion was locked and that she couldn’t access it. So, she instead signed me up for the current promotion, which is 3000 night and weekend nationwide minutes, and an expanded regional service that includes twelve states: pretty much every contiguous state west of Texas. I told her I thought I could deal with that.
Granted, I’m not going to go completely nuts and jump up and down with joy, cancel long distance and land line, etc. until I verify that this change has, in fact, taken place. But so far I’m pretty pleased.
The moral here is that if you ever have problems with your cell service, don’t call customer disservice. Go to the store instead.