That being said, their customer service is absolute shit. I spent way too many hours on the phone just trying to get what was rightfully mine, and they were ready and waiting to find a way to screw me out of $100. But let's go back to the beginning.
My wife was due for a new phone around Thanksgiving. On Black Friday, I braved the crowds to go to the Verizon store and see what kind of a deal I could get her. I found out that I could get $200 off a Galaxy S6, and then another $100 credit from her phone being two years old. This sounds great to me. The guy lets me know that the deal only lasts through the weekend, which is no big deal, as we can just stop by the next day and get it taken care of.
So, we cruise in on Saturday morning to just get it done and over with, and when I ask about the deal, I am informed that the deal was only good for Black Friday. Now that $200 off is only $100 off. I confidently notified that I was told it lasted through the weekend, as clearly, they would honor that deal. They did not, and had no intention of giving me anything more than their current offers. This did not sit well with me, but I refused to give up.
I contacted Verizon's customer service, still confident that they would quickly take care of this situation. I talked to the first person, and they were surprisingly unable to help me. Undeterred, I asked to speak with their supervisor. He was only willing to get me that same deal that the store was offering, and I had to inform him that that deal was not good enough. We went back and forth on this being all that he could do until finally he became so exasperated that he got his supervisor on the line.
This is where things got more interesting. The third-tier of Verizon customer service was parroting a lot of what the other two had been saying. But I brought up that clearly they give credits for different things, so couldn't they do that since I was given bad information, and I was literally calling nine hours after the deal had expired, thinking I still had 39 hours to do it. Our conversation went something like this:
Verizon: Well, I could do that, but if I did that in this situation it wouldn't go through.
Me: Why not?
Verizon: Well, it would get flagged since there wouldn't be proper reason for it.
Me: Well, just do it anyway, and if it gets flagged, then I can deal with that later.
Verizon: I can't.
Me: You just said you could.
Verizon: Well, it would probably get flagged, and ethically, it wouldn't be right.
It was at this point that I brought up the fact that ethically, a business should honor their words to their customers, so the only ethical solution would be to give me my rightful discount. When asked, "Wouldn't giving me the discount be the ethical thing to do?" he started stammering over his words and tried to get off the ethics conversation.
After nearly an hour and a half, he finally told me that his supervisor would call me back during the week since they don't work on the weekends. I said that was fine, and that I would be looking forward to their call, as I was not ready to give up on getting what was rightfully mine.
Those garbage people never called me back.
Then a combination of life getting in the way ad me not really wanting to deal with another hour on the phone with customer service delayed my plan nearly two months as it got near the middle of January. I was finally bored enough to deal with it and again got on the phone with their customer service team. They started saying very similar things, and then stated that had I purchased the phone when I first spoke with them on the phone, maybe they could have given me the necessary credit to get me the full discount, but since I didn't buy it then, there was nothing they could do.
This was absolutely complete and utter crap, as had I already bought the phone, they would have said that I agreed to that deal, and had I waited to talk to someone else, maybe they could have given me the proper deal. It's a great strategy for screwing people over; it's just horribly dishonest and despicable.
Anyway, after another hour on the phone, I finally broke and just got the phone. If the phone was for myself, I would have waited it out and kept spending hours on the phone with customer service, but the only person who was suffering was my wife who was stuck with her old, crappy phone. The good news is that she really likes the new phone, so props to Samsung for making a quality product.
Verizon Wireless, you screwed me out of $100. Please give me the money you owe me. Thanks.
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