Verizon Wireless will take advantage of you any chance they get

I will try to explain this without letting too much of my emotions dictate what is written.  However I am quite upset with them at the moment so this will likely be full of colorful discriptions of thier poor customer service.

Let me give you a history lesson first.  Verizion Wireless bought Airtouch which I believe bought LA Cellular which I became a customer of in the mid ’90s.  I have been a loyal customer for a long time.  But as you will see that doesn’t mean squat when it comes to service.

I could go on about the things that upset me prior to mid July when this story begins, but that would require too much research at this point and it really doesn’t matter.  All you need to know is that I called to cancel my service and spoke with a gentleman who actually had the tools and the brains to be helpful in my situation and was able to give me the type of service I had come to expect from VZW.  So I stayed with them. 

Now onto mid July.  My spouses phone died a horrible death mind you and we went into a Corporate VZW store.  We were looking to upgrade her to a phone that would sync with Outlook that way would never loose all her contact information (as we just had done with this last phone.)  I asked some specific questions on how does the phone sync, what protocol does it use, can it work with an exchange server, will it pull or push or both with the exchange server, etc. Here is where it starts.  The sales associate said “I have worked here for 3 years and I have never heard that question, so it must not be a big [deal or concern]“  What I heard was, “I have worked here a long time, your question is stupid and unimportant, go away.”  Needless to say I was flabbergasted that a sales associate, that makes money on sales, would have the gall to say your question is not important.  This happened to be my spouses birthday and we were getting the phone to urgently replace the dead one, and as a gift.  I walked out of there letting the store manager know that his associate successfully lost a 10+ year customer with that stupid statement.

Went over to Sprint and asked the same questions, about the same phones.  This sales associate also did not have the answer I was looking for, but was willing to point me in the right direction to get the answers.  I ended up purchasing a phone there and getting service with Sprint, porting over my spouces VZW number.

While this process was completing, I spoke with a VZW customer care person about the change and what happens with my account now that it only has the one line.  I was told nothing would change, nor do I need to worry about it, she did try to get me to come back to vzw, but she did not have the tools in her belt that could match the tools that Sprint had and by this point it was going to take a lot to get me back.

 This still leaves the situation with my phone.  About a month later I get a phone call from VZW telling me that since the “primary” line was tranfered away, we need to change my plan because it no longer existed and requries a primary line.  Oh by the way, the primary line was always my line, but some sales rep had switched it when we bought new phones so he could make commisions on two new accounts rather than one. (This inforation was provided for me from the customer retention when I inquired about the primary change and who authorized it.)  I was told I had until the end of the billing cycle to pick a new plan.

Well I called today to pick a new plan (because I am not financally ready to buy the Sprint Mogul that I want) and wait it out until I can get the Mogul from Sprint. 

Here is where my blood begins to boil.  I was told by the rep my service had been billing me at $0.35 a minute for every minute used since I didn’t have a primary line and had no plan.  WHAT THE HECK!!!!!  I usually use 700-1500 minutes a month.  To see what had transpired I was told they can’t see the bill because it was just cut yesterday.  In todays technolgy, they can’t see a bill for 3 days after the cut off? That just doesn’t make sense to me. 

Long story short, They screwed me big time, and to make matters worse, as I am leaving the Verizon ship, they are screwing me again and again and will keep screwing me until I get off that pile of dung ship called Verizon Wireless.