Most people have some horror story in dealing with a cell phone company. It might be shoddy service, repeatedly defective phones, billing issues or any myriad of things. I had Sprint as my personal provider for a long time – 2002 until 2012 in fact. In general, I had pretty good success with Sprint. There was the occasional billing question, but I had good phones, good customer service, and great reception wherever I went.  Eventually, I ended up on a company cell phone plan, so it was just Sarah on our personal Sprint account. We ended up with Verizon, and I quickly found myself in the world of cell phone hell. Billing problems, disrespectful customer service reps and broken promises. This is the story of how a well-placed email sorted everything out.

Eventually, Sarah’s HTC Hero started giving her fits. It was rapidly aging hardware unable to keep up with the higher resource demands by newer apps and updates to existing apps. It also had an interesting glitch where it would randomly show a completely incorrect time, causing alarms and alerts to be missed. I decided to replace it with an iPhone 4. We called Sprint, and found they had terminated their early upgrade program. If Sarah wanted a new phone before April, we’d have to terminate the contract and start over fresh somewhere else. Meanwhile, my stepmother was on an old, old plan with AT&T from the old Cingular days, $25/mo for 250 minutes, period. No nights/weekends, just 250 minutes. More and more, she was starting to go over that limit. I proposed the idea to my dad of putting her on our account to save both of us money. He agreed, so I hopped online to look at plans and grabbed a chat session with a sales rep. I asked him about my employee discount from my current employer, and he explained it was a 22% discount on the monthly charges.

I checked and saw the only VZW dealer open on New Year’s Eve was Best Buy, so I headed out there. I set up the account, a $69.90 family share plan (actually come to find out it’s a $50 plan with two 9.95 access charges, this is important later.) I added a $30 data plan for Sarah as well. Total, $99.90 with a 22% discount should be approximately $78/mo for the two lines. I was so glad about saving some money that I didn’t even contest the activation charge of $35/line. I just needed to stop by an actual VZW store to activate my discount. I did that on January 2nd.

I needed to bring my pay stub in, so printed it out, brought the stub in, they scanned it and gave it back. I asked again about the discount. “So this is 22% off all monthly charges, right?” “Yes, sir.” I inquired further, “and it will show up on the first bill, right?” They replied “Well, we’re supposed to tell you two months, but since you just signed up for service two days ago, you should see it on the first bill.” Good enough for me!

Everything is going great, the phones are working great. The 14 day return period runs out. Then, on January 21st, the bill came, no discount. I was going to have to call in, I guess.  Here is my description of what happened next, per my email to Verizon:

I called in on the evening of the 21st and was told “There is no discount on your line” and that I should go to www.verizonwireless.com/discounts and register my employee discount again. I asked to wait on hold for a supervisor and was denied this option. I insisted on waiting and speaking to a supervisor. I was told I should hang up and call back and ask someone else. Shortly thereafter, the representative hung up on me. At no time in the conversation was I vulgar or abusive.

After that call, I went to the website and registered my discount.

I called back and spoke briefly to another CSR, explained my situation and previous call, and was immediately transferred to a supervisor, Miles, Badge V0FRM42. He explained that the discount should take two months to apply (contrary to what I was told in store). He agreed to apply the 22% discount for the first two months as a lump sum to make up for this. He then explained that the employee discount only covers the $50 for the family share plan, not the $20 in line access charges or the $30 in data plans. In short, my expected $22/mo discount was only $11/mo. Over the 24 months of an agreement, this equals a $264 difference.He agreed to look into a way of perhaps waiving one of the access charges for a year to help make up some of this difference, and promised me a call back Tuesday at 6PM when the department that could help was available. I agreed to this. Tuesday at 6PM came and went, no call.

A series of tweets between myself and @VZWSupport ended with a call from “Antonio” I believe. He agreed to my request to waive the activation fees but was unwilling to do anything further.

I went further to explain exactly the resolutions I would consider acceptable:

At this point, I wish for one of two resolutions:

1: I will pay for the service we used, return the phones, and pay no early termination fee. I have been lied to by Verizon employees twice (about the discount and about a return call) and I’ve been hung up on. I no longer wish to do business with Verizon.

OR

2. I will accept a one time credit of $264 to make up for the discrepancy between the discount I was promised (22% on all monthly charges) and the discount I’m told I will get (22% only off the $50 family share plan amount) and the waiver of the activation fees to make up for the time I’ve spent on the phone trying to get this resolved.

I fired this email off to every Verizon executive email account I could find on the morning of January 25th. On the 26th, I received an email from Crystal on their “Executive Relations” team promising a full review of my account and a call within 24 hours. Sure enough, today, Crystal called. I rehashed the whole story with her top to bottom. She apologized for the misinformation, for the hang up, and for the missed call back. It was actually a very pleasant discussion where I explained how I had moved from Sprint and AT&T to Verizon, and how I was unhappy that this was my first experience with Verizon. She apologized again and offered to expedite the application of my discount and  to meet my request for a lump sum credit for the $264 which I gladly accepted. She promised another communication within 24 hours to confirm that these had taken place.

In the end, I’m satisfied. I would rather I had just been informed properly from the start, although I probably would not have transferred to Verizon had this occurred. However, it is nice to know that they were willing to live up to what their employee promised. It is an excellent example of how to approach any service issue with a major corporation: 1) Customer service, 2) Ask for a supervisor; 3) Attempt another, public venue for customer service such as Twitter/Facebook; 4) Executive e-Mail carpet bomb.

Keep in mind, I don’t advocate using these methods just to get something that would be “nice to have”, like an early upgrade. If people waste these higher tier’s time, they are less likely to listen when you have a legitimate beef.

The full text of my email is below:

Folks:
I found your email addresses via the consumer watchdog website Consumerist.com. The short version of my story is this: I bought an iPhone 4 and a basic flip phone with a family share plan at Best Buy from Verizon for two lines (one ported from AT&T, 330-XXX-XXXX, one replacing a line cancelled with Sprint, 330-XXX-XXXX) and added a data plan to one of this. This happened on 12/31/11. I knew I had a 22% corporate discount available, and I  knew I had to go into a Verizon store to activate it. I was also fully aware I had 14 days to terminate my service without service charges.

On January 2, I went into the Verizon store at  3750 West Market Street in Fairlawn, OH (330-XXX-XXXX) with my pay stub. I asked about the discount: “So this is 22% off all monthly charges?” and was told ”Yes.” They scanned my paystub (or took photos, couldn’t tell which) and told me that I should see my discount on the first bill.

My first bill arrived on January 21st, conveniently 7 days after my 14 days expired. On it I discovered no discount of any variety. I called in on the evening of the 21st and was told “There is no discount on your line” and that I should go to www.verizonwireless.com/discounts and register my employee discount again. I asked to wait on hold for a supervisor and was denied this option. I insisted on waiting and speaking to a supervisor. I was told I should hang up and call back and ask someone else. Shortly thereafter, the representative hung up on me. At no time in the conversation was I vulgar or abusive.

After that call, I went to the website and registered my discount.

I called back and spoke briefly to another CSR, explained my situation and previous call, and was immediately transferred to a supervisor, Miles, Badge V0FRM42. He explained that the discount should take two months to apply (contrary to what I was told in store). He agreed to apply the 22% discount for the first two months as a lump sum to make up for this. He then explained that the employee discount only covers the $50 for the family share plan, not the $20 in line access charges or the $30 in data plans. In short, my expected $22/mo discount was only $11/mo. Over the 24 months of an agreement, this equals a $264 difference.He agreed to look into a way of perhaps waiving one of the access charges for a year to help make up some of this difference, and promised me a call back Tuesday at 6PM when the department that could help was available. I agreed to this. Tuesday at 6PM came and went, no call.

A series of tweets between myself and @VZWSupport ended with a call from “Antonio” I believe. He agreed to my request to waive the activation fees but was unwilling to do anything further.

At this point, I wish for one of two resolutions:

1: I will pay for the service we used, return the phones, and pay no early termination fee. I have been lied to by Verizon employees twice (about the discount and about a return call) and I’ve been hung up on. I no longer wish to do business with Verizon.

OR

2. I will accept a one time credit of $264 to make up for the discrepancy between the discount I was promised (22% on all monthly charges) and the discount I’m told I will get (22% only off the $50 family share plan amount) and the waiver of the activation fees to make up for the time I’ve spent on the phone trying to get this resolved.

Thank you for your time, I appreciate your assistance.

Stephen M. Martin
330-XXX-XXXX