That’s how I like it evidently.
Anyway, I recently signed up for a new cell phone package with Verizon. I had their service before for two + years, so I got a cheaper phone with the rebate and all that, and I was relatively happy with their service, so it seemed to be a good idea to stick with them. Plus my parents have Verizon, and my girlfriend, and so it made sense to stick with the whole In-calling thing. Plus, all the problems that I did have I attributed to my phone, which was a piece of junk, to say the least.
Now that is the back-story to this story: I got my bill the other day, and it was about $25 more than it should be. I printed it out, looked it over, and had no idea why this was. Along with my 400 minutes (which I didn’t go over) I had gotten a 250 text and/or picture messaging package that I had been using quite a bit. I thought that maybe I had gone over my allotted text messages, which was why they were charging me, but I didn’t think that I had gone that far over.
So I call my friendly neighborhood Verizon customer service agent who agrees to help me out. She tells me that I don’t have a 250 text and/or picture messaging package, but only picture messaging. Which means that all the text messages that I’ve sent and received cost me 10 cents a pop. And that adds up. But this doesn’t make sense to me, since I wouldn’t knowingly sign up for this plan, because I knew that I wasn’t going to send picture messages, but that I was going to send text messages. Which to me means that the guy at the kiosk signed me up for the wrong plan.
After I mention this to the friendly neighborhood customer service agent, she tells me that there is no such plan.
Have I mentioned that I’m starting to get a little pissed off? Because I am. Especially since this whole time she is trying to upsell me to the $10 a month, unlimted in-network text/picture messages and 500 out of network messages plan. Which I am not going to get. So I try to bring her attention to the fact that, on my bill that I have printed out and it is in my hand, it says that I can get the plan I want for the price I want. To which she replies: “Na-unh”. And I’m starting to think that instead of making some upsell, she needs to start worrying about keeping the customers that she already has.
At this point in time, I start thinking about my options. I can think of two of them that come immediately to mind (which means that there are probably quite a few more, but I’m d-u-m so I don’t think of those): 1) get her supervisor on the phone and bitch her/him out about the incompetence of their employees and the fact that my bill is wrong. 2) go to the place that I originally got my phone from and explain the problem to them, and maybe they’ll be more helpful. I opt for number 2, since I’m already getting close to being late for a lunch meeting, and I just don’t have it in my to be as bitchy as I should be to the woman’s manager. So I tell her that I’ll take care of everything online, and goodbye. To which she responds with her rehearsed (and heartfelt, I’m sure) “We’d like to thank you for choosing Verizon Wireless, and if there is anything else that you may need please feel free to call” speech. I hung up about half way through.
As it turns out, the customer service agent was even dumber than I originally thought. After talking to someone at the kiosk where I got the phone, we figured out the real situation. 1) I do have the plan that is both text and picture messaging. 2) It is the $5 a month plan that I told her about, and that plan is still valid and open for people to get on board with. 3) The charges occurred for two reasons, first because I was charged for a full month and for a portion of a month to get my billing cycle to start on the exact date that I went in and got my new phone, and second because I went over my allotted amount of text messages for that portion of the month. No big deal on either part, but when you add it together with stupid customer service agents who don’t answer my question correctly, it became a pain in my ass.
All in all, not a shining moment for the Verizon Customer Service department.