Verizon Gets the Boot
Written: May 08 '01
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Pros: Great coverage, good rates
Cons: Abysmal service
The Bottom Line: Their coverage is good, but their service is so poor as to render the phone often unusable.
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| sjacobson's Full Review: General Reviews of Verizon Customer Service |
I have always been averse to the idea of cell phones. Call me crazy (and if you were my brother, you'd immediately respond by saying, "Crazy!"), but I hold myself in slightly higher esteem than vapid teenagers who go out "malling" and feel the need to share their experiences in realtime with their friends... friends who are likely out "malling" across town.
Travel for my work, however, made a cell phone a virtual necessity in my life during the year 2000, and since then I have found this noxious little device to be indispensable. I rely on it when I go out of town; I carry it when commuting to work in case of any problems; I lend it to my fiance for his daily wanderings.
I chose Verizon for the simple reason that they seemed to have better national coverage than anyone else, hands down. (I have since learned that AT&T has comparable coverage.) Many other services have coverage maps with huge gaps, or, worse yet, have maps that more resemble yesterdays spiderwebs than a network with which one can feel confident. I signed on for service while I was on a temporary assignment in Huntsville, Alabama, and toted my loved and hated little Motorola Startac on my relocation to California in fall of 2000 (and, may I add, the cell was my ONLY phone during the several months I spent back in California) and finally to my current home in Georgia in the winter of 2000. The plan I started with, and stayed with, was the National One Rate plan with 400 minutes.
The initial sign-up was simple enough, especially since I did most of it online. The phone arrived with no big trouble. It nettled me slightly that even though I had carefully gone over details on the phone with a customer "service" representative, there were little things of which I was not notified, such as the necessity to go through a certain set of steps to get voice mail activated. That point aside, service was adequate--basically because I didn't have to communicate with Verizon at all. The phone worked nicely all over the country, and thus served its purpose.
The problems started coming when I moved to the Atlanta area.
First, there was the absurd difficulty in getting my account transferred from the Huntsville billing system and area code that I had maintained to the Atlanta system. The guys in customer service told me I had to go to a store; the guys at the store told me I had to call customer service. Finally, I got it straightened out, although they mucked up my address for a good while.
Then the cellular service problems started coming... every time I traveled, I would get a different recorded message telling me either that I couldn't use the phone or that I should have a credit card ready, because I'd have to pay extra to use the phone there.
The final straw came as a result of a problem in February 2001: a check I had mailed in for the last bill was cashed by Verizon but not applied to my bill. Although I made my first call to Verizon as soon as I found out that the payment had been misapplied, it took close to three months for this to get straightened out, in which interim I experienced such joys as unannounced cancellations of service, "PAST DUE" notices, several cumulative hours on the phone with Verizon, and my faxing in of the canceled check on four different occasions.
The service through this entire fiasco was horrendous. For example, after pursuing the matter for several weeks and having faxed the canceled check in twice, I was notified that I had been given an incorrect number to which to fax said item.
Most of the customer service representatives with whom I spoke promised with a veneer of sincerity to get this straightened out "right away", but some were clearly blase about the whole matter, even though my frustration and impatience grew so much that mild-mannered me ended up getting quite upset. I made statements of the sort that I abhor, and which rarely escape my lips, such as "Do I have any more reason to believe that you're going to look into this than I had to believe the other five people I've spoken to in the last couple of months?" and "So you're telling me that Verizon doesn't care enough about keeping their customers that they're going to do anything about it?"
Well, clearly they didn't. When they finally got the nasty mess cleaned up, they didn't bother to call me, and the unpleasant woman to whom I spoke to try to follow up on the matter combined such exceptional incompetence and glowing disconcern that I thought I'd have to reach into the phone to drag the minimal information she could provide out of her. As she was apparently incapable of figuring out how to transfer me to a manager to complain, I banged the phone down and decided to write an epinion warning you, Gentle Reader, against the same frustration that I endured.
I am hereby and henceforth renouncing all ties to Verizon, and throwing myself upon the mercy of their rival AT&T.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 55
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Epinions.com ID:
sjacobson
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Member: Sarah Jacobson
Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 39
Trusted by: 10 members
About Me:
I'm a twenty-something engineer, with inexplicably strong opinions on (pop) culture.
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