Dumb things Verizon did

A few months ago, I got phone service for my mom.  

She hardly makes long distance calls, but the charge for the first month was more than $65. 

I was outraged.  When I'd signed up, I had asked Verizon for the cheapest service.  Was this really it?

I called them.  First off, they said that it was $2.50 each for certain directory assistance calls.  Any calls to 411 over the first four calls cost money.  I asked where that was written.  It was in some small print somewhere.  She'd made four of them, so I figured I'd tell her to be more careful.

But the bigger issue was the calling plan.  I said my mom doesn't really use caller ID, voicemail, etc.  She doesn't like complicated mechanical things.  They told me they had a cheaper plan for all that stuff, $36.99 per month.  They should have told me that when I signed up, but whatever...so I asked them to change to the cheaper plan.

The biggest issue

I kept talking to the guy, and we had a long, amiable conversation about how to remove other charges.  It ended with the plan being changes and some things being removed.

...or so I thought!

I got his name.  ALWAYS get people's names.  Even for the simplest things, it always gets lost in the system.

How it ended:  We ended our half-hour conversation, and I thought that was the end of it, and that I'd see the changes on the next bill.

The next bill

The next bill was exactly the same.  The new, cheaper plan was not on there.  There was no evidence of my half-hour conversation with the man.

I called Verizon.  I hate those calls.  With Verizon, which is supposed to be a phone company, they put you through about five different voicemail options before you get to a person.  If you are calling about cell phones or adding internet, you get through faster.

I got a woman and explained my situation.  She looked it up in her system and found no evidence of my half-hour conversation the month before.

I gave her the name of the man we talked to, the time and date I called, and what we talked about.

She didn't take any of it down.  I had proof of the conversation, and it was as if she didn't care!

She said she could start those services from right now.  I said I wanted a refund back to when I called a month ago.  She said she couldn't do that because she had no evidence of the conversation.

I again gave her the name of the man, etc., and she ignored it.  

Instead, she asked if I had an order number.  I said that the man never gave me one, and I didn't even know I was supposed to ask for one.  She said, "You're right; if he didn't give you one, there'd be no reason you'd know to ask for one."

Suggestion to Verizon #1:  Please tell your customers, when they change something, that they are supposed to ask for an order number!!  (And if you forget to give it to your customers, guess what, you have their phone numbers.)

I told this woman I wanted to talk to her supervisor (always what you should do).

She said she'd get the supervisor.  I was on hold for a minute.  She got back on and said that she was holding, but it might take a while.  I said I was willing to wait.

I also asked her to please not hang up on me (yes, it happens all the time even after you've spent a half hour going through things with someone, and then when you call back and give the name of the person you've been talking to, they say you can't talk to that person - so you have to start all over.  There is one company I've dealt with who takes your name and number right away when you call customer service, in case you get cut off.  I forget who it is now, but all companies should do this - especially the phone company, since they should know how not to hang up!!!)

The woman asked if I wanted to give my number so a supervisor could call me back later, or if I should continue to hold.  I said I would continue to hold, but I gave her my number anyway in case we got cut off. 

I held for a minute, and then I heard that familiar sound - I'd been cut off, of course!  Nice that the phone company doesn't know how to handle phones.

Part II:  My second call after I'd been hung up on

Instead of waiting for a supervisor to call me back, which I wasn't sure would happen soon if at all, I just called Verizon again and got through to a different woman and asked for her name.

I told her that I'd changed some services on the bill, and it didn't show up.

She said, "Yes, you changed from such and such to such and such...." and read my notes of the conversation from last month, the conversation the other woman said didn't exist!!

"I don't know why it wasn't ever put in," she said, confused.  

I asked that if she hung up on me by accident, if she would call me back.  "I won't hang up on you," she said kindly.

Anyway, she put the services back on and also authorized a refund for the extra charges from the past month.

Whew.

But she (of course) didn't give me an order number, so I asked her for one, and she gave it to me, and I wrote it down.

So this month, I got the refund and things are fine.  But it took an hour and a half of calls to straighten out something simple!

I am going to probably go to Verizon's website (since they actually prefer these days that you not talk on the phone to them - ironically) and paste this in, and make two suggestions:

1.  SUGGESTION ONE: Please take the person's name and number right away in case you 'accidentally' hang up on them when putting them on hold or transferring a call, so they won't have to call back and go through everything with a different person.  It's good customer service.  Especially with a phone company.

2.  SUGGESTION TWO:  Please give someone an order number when you change something, rather than waiting for them to ask, since they don't know they have to. 

While I'm here, here's a third suggestion:

3.  SUGGESTION THREE:  Put in bigger print what directory assistance will cost, since it used to be free.  Especially since you have senior citizens using it who don't use the internet.

By the way, to all of you reading this:  Get a person's name ANY time you talk to someone on the phone.  It's the only evidence you have of the conversation.

Second beef with Verizon

I switched to a different provider for my own phone a month ago....and...

A week later, I got a note stuck to my front door saying I had a package.  Often, UPS can't deliver packages to my building because the doors are locked.  So I have to go downtown to the van at a certain time to get them.

I did this the next night.  Turns out the "Package" was one sheet of glossy paper in a special mailer, from Verizon, asking me to come back to them...and they could offer me a really cheap rate!

Verizon should not be spending money on sending one-page letters special delivery.  That's part of what drove their costs up and probably drove me away from their services in the first place.

Third dumb thing Verizon does

Another complaint:  Even when I DID have their services, I used to get notices in the mail that said that "new customers" could get cheap rates. 

I called one time, and they confirmed that it didn't apply to me, but that it was sent out as a marketing thing even to existing customers who didn't quality.

It is so frustrating to write all these complaints that already wasted an hour and a half of my life.  But if I don't, it will happen to other people.

What I fear is that so many companies -- not to mention government agencies -- screw things up like this, and people who have less resources than I do, and are more needy, often end up not getting the help they need because they don't know how to push through the walls and get the right service.  

Can you imagine how people who are poor or sick get their right government help and medical help, if people like me have to struggle with customer service and can't get the phone company to do something right?  (Yes, it is a true analogy since the govt is even harder to deal with than private companies...trust me, I've given them information lots of times that disappeared from their systems and warranted other calls.)

Well, I don't know who read this, but at least I've gotten this down.  Whoo.  On the positive side, I should say that Verizon's technicians are good and have checked my lines before without charging me (well, one time, after a storm).  But their customer service should be improved.  They are, after all, a phone company.

And please stop sending out notices via UPS and driving up your fees.  Thank you.

By the way, here's my friend Jodi's long account of her struggles with Verizon for 10 months...

I posted this not to make fun of Verizon.  I even said something good about them a few months back.  

I posted this so that my readers can learn from it, AND because if I paste it into Verizon's website, where they have a place for you to put complaints, hopefully they'll change things, too.  Hopefully!

How it relates to your taxes and gov't

Also, I wanted to show how hard it is for a normal person to get customer service to do something simple, because if you can imagine how disabled and disadvantaged people deal with customer service for companies AND for the government (which has even more red tape), you can see how sometimes they don't get the right kind of help (health insurance, etc.) which costs us more in the long run.  These people end up going to emergency rooms because they don't have insurance to see doctors.

Social workers, whose job it is to help them, should get paid a lot more than they do.