A letter to Verizon

Updated at 9:58pm. I managed to find some contacts. Thanks to the help of Google, I managed to find several media contacts on their news center. I emailed the letter below to Robert.Kelley@VerizonWireless.com; Thomas.Pica@VerizonWireless.com; Sheldon.Jones@VerizonWireless.com; caran.smith@verizonwireless.com; Carolyn.Culbertson@verizonwireless.com and Nancy.Stark@verizonwireless.com. Hopefully someone will respond by tomorrow evening, otherwise I will start hounding the BBB and some of the local news channels with their pain in the ass Consumer Advocacy Alert Teams, or whatever the hell they are called now.

Originally posted on 1-21-2007 at 9:14PM

I have attempted to contact Verizon. I did find one link to email the Customer Advocacy department, but it won’t let you send a fucking message over 700 characters. I am looking for email addresses to any of their VP’s or Presidents, particularly in the marketing or communications departments if any of you guys know them. Contacting customer non-service is fucking useless, I am tired of dealing with them. Perhaps someone with the company that would not like bad press would be willing to take care of my problem.

Here is the body of the email that I have been trying to send this evening, edited for content that you guys don’t need. More in the extended entry.

On Saturday, January 13th, my son’s mobile phone was stolen from him at a wrestling tournament. His mobile number is EDITED and he is on my Family Choice plan. I called it a couple of times, the first time someone answered and then hung up. After that they just let it roll to voice mail. For a couple of days they must have had it turned off as it would roll straight to voice mail without ringing.

We tried several times to call whoever it was, and last night Saturday January 20th I had a friend who is NOT in my son’s contact list call. They answered and hung up after briefly speaking with my friend, and then called back. After getting no information from them they hung up and called back from another number EDITED, also a Verizon number apparently registered in Newnan Georgia. They also hung up on my friend after they figured out what we were after. I called this new number and threatened them with legal action if the phone was not returned to me immediately. They said OK and then hung up. After a few minutes they called me back and gave me a story about a neighbor having the phone, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. When I told them that they would be considered accessories to theft they agreed to get the phone and return it to me today.

I have gotten the phone now, and there are a few issues, as well as some issues with YOUR customer service which I will detail shortly. They have made possibly several hundred text messages in the last nine days, I am not sure how many were made prior to the 13th since I won’t receive my bill for a week or so. All of the messages have been deleted from the phone, along with any that my son had saved. There were also several outgoing and incoming calls this week including the ones that my wife and I made trying to locate the phone.

Here is a synopsis of the calls, these do not include the ones that were made from my phone or my wife’s:

Received

EDITED 1-20-07 9:47pm When we called from my friend’s phone Saturday evening.

EDITED 1-20-07 8:29pm

EDITED 1-19-07 10am

EDITED 1-18-07 10:36am

EDITED 1-18-07 8:48am

dialed

EDITED 1-21-07 12:48am

EDITED 1-21-07 12:01am

EDITED 1-20-07 9:47pm This is when they called my friend back from his phone.

EDITED 1-19-07 11:43am

EDITED 1-17-07 10:51pm

EDITED 1-17-07 10:49pm

EDITED 1-13-07 9:56pm

As you can see, they continued to make a couple of calls after we finished with them on Saturday evening.

They also deleted a couple of Ringtones that my son had purchased. These were:

Metallica – Harvester of sorrow

Metallica – Seek and Destroy

They purchased a ringtone that I do not recognize. Something called Home, don’t know the artist.

During the time that his phone was missing, I attempted to contact customer service, and sat on hold forever, finally hanging up. I can’t afford to spend 40 minutes of my time at work to wait on hold just to get a phone suspended until I could find it. I told my wife that she was going to have to take my son to the Verizon store, have it suspended, and then allow him to purchase another phone if he wanted, since I had declined the insurance. They went to West Georgia Wireless at 596 Carrollton Villa Rica Hwy, Villa Rica, GA (770) 456-2332 on Friday January 19th. There, the representative talked them into adding back the declined insurance, and told them to wait a couple of days, go to one of the corporate stores in Carrollton or Douglasville Georgia and tell them we had just lost the phone. What a coincidence, just added insurance, then lost the phone. I’m sure that would be believable. However, they went ahead and agreed, I have a scanned copy of the Features Changed Receipt available to email to you if you need to see it. At the bottom it shows Removed Features: Decline Insurance

Feeling uncomfortable with what your authorized reseller had talked my wife into, I decided that I would visit the corporate store and have it taken care of myself. In the meantime, we located who had stolen the phone and gotten it back.

I visited the Verizon Store at 1655 S Highway 27 Carrollton, GA 30117 (770) 830-0376. I spoke with a lady working in the front and let her know about what had happened with the phone, as well as what the Verizon reseller had suggested, and I asked what I could do to check on whether or not I was getting charged for a bunch of text messages. She responded as follows:

As far as the suggestion that West Georgia Wireless was not only condoning but suggesting Insurance Fraud, all she had to say was “They are an authorized Verizon Dealer”. I would really be interested in just what the hell that has to do with it. Do your employees not care or are they just too stupid to deal with issues. I asked to speak to the manager when I first came in and this woman asked if she could help me, so I assumed that she was the manager.

She also told me that there was no way that they had added insurance, that you have to do that within 15 days of purchase. That very well may be true, but if it is, then your reseller in Villa Rica was blowing smoke up my wife’s ass and just gave her a fake printout and that needs to be taken care of.

As far as the charges go, she told me that I needed to deal with customer service. I am really starting to get pissed off now, thus this letter. Was she just a paid door greeter, since obviously she couldn’t help me and couldn’t answer any of my questions either. If she is just a salesperson, then perhaps you need to train them to field questions that customers might have for them.

I am tired of dealing with customer service, and I want this matter resolved. I expect to not be charged for ANY calls made this week if it makes me go over my minutes. I also expect to not be charged for ANY text messages sent or received during the same period. I expect to NOT be charged for whatever crappy ringtone was purchased on my son’s phone this week and I expect for the two ringtones that were deleted to be made accessible to him for download to his phone. If this is not possible, then you either need to send someone out to my house to put them on his phone at no charge, or you can send me a new phone with his ringtones on it, and I will gladly ship his old one back to you at your expense. IF the insurance was added, you may leave it on, otherwise I need something in writing stating that I have declined the insurance on his phone. I do have it on my line but that is the only one prior to the 19th of January.

I am in the customer service business, and as my company grows bigger, we also expect it to grow BETTER. We concentrate more and more every day on taking care of the customer, to make it easier for them to get results, and to see to their needs. If you want to continue to have satisfied customers, you need to take a good long look at the people on the customer service side of your corporation. Thank you for your cooperation.

You may reach me at:

Richard Miles

Some Street

Temple, GA ZIPCODE

770-EDITED

Here is the attached copy of the invoice from West Georgia Wireless, I won’t be able to attach it to the body of message I am sending from your website, but I will to any email that I manage to send.

verizonfeaturechane.jpg

That is pretty much it for the message. Now if I could only get the email addresses I need all will be well. Now call me a dumbass, but isn’t the Asurion 4.99 Insurance? If not, then what the fuck is it?


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3 throughts on "A letter to Verizon"

  1. I did the same thing to Blockbuster a couple of years ago when the store that I rented from apparently saved my credit card info when they aren’t supposed to and charged me a late fee that had already been paid.

    It took one round of emails to everyone in their marketing department to get it fixed. I hate customer noservice with a passion.

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