Verizon Wireless customer service

BTW the story about how Sprint one day randomly mailed a bunch of their clients who called Customer Service too much saying "we are letting u go from Sprint" is hilarious!! this was like 1 month ago i think?

they're the worst fucking people on the planet, imho

haha see my friend at work feels the same! she said she's had bad experiences when her phone has had problems etc. i dunno for some reason they're good to me. i did just sign up for insurance tho, which i feel is necessay for me

i just called and she was polite but not great. she sounded like she had just gotten her braces off and was about to go shopping or something.

Wife went to Israel for a family funeral, checked her e-mail a bit, somehow got a $1,100 bill for international roaming. In the past I've always been bad at dealing with things like this, but I decided to practice my negotiation skills.

The woman I got was nicer than I expected. My first move was to mention the funeral. My second move was "My wife says she only checked her e-mail a bit, and I believe her." (i.e. "Don't you fucking dare insult my wife or insinuate this is her fault.") I did a little tennis match with her about how unreasonable it was to charge such exorbitant rates for basically having your phone turned on (she explained that the phone "uses data all the time"). I said "I know you didn't come up with this charge yourself, and I imagine you understand how unreasonable it is." (i.e., you're a customer service rep, you don't get paid enough, how would YOU feel?) She said, "certainly sir."

The magic words: "Look, we are not going to pay this charge." She says "Ok, I'll see what I can do." and then "I'm authorized to reduce it to 50%" So I'm like "So $550 instead of $1100? You're going to charge me $550 for this? That's just not going to happen." So then she pulls the "I'll see what I can do" -- put you on hold to "talk to the supervisor" (i.e. play with a paddle ball for 5 minutes). At this point I'm ready to call this an extortion scheme, threaten to contact legislators and the FCC, etc. But finally she offers me a retroactive charge of what it would cost to have the cheapest "global data" plan that would have covered the usage -- $100. I decide this is at least sort of fair, since it's what it would have cost had we set up the proper service.

I still feel sort of gypped, although I guess I'm proud I stood my ground as much as I did.

I know, cool story bro, tl;dr, etc. But it was a good lesson in dealing with these things. I may still contact the FCC and my congressmen.

this IS a great story, gonna remember your moves for when im next in a similar situation. any more tips like this v welcome

Naw I would say you handled it like a champ – you got 91% knocked off your fee. I can say as a person who works in a call center that every time someone threatens to bring in all the cops, lawyers, governors and press I just roll my eyes. I know this is probably not how I'm supposed to react but it's true because it always feels empty due to it being comically overblown. OTOH I know there are some companies (like Comcast) who you seem to only get a rxn from them if you start bitching about them on Twitter.

I think if you work customer service, you are just grateful for anyone who is polite/tactful/patient, even if they have heavy demands & grievances like H2 did. The combo of being firm but patient & kind will get you far.

I think it also helps to be reasonable – my mom-in-law will call the bank & try to get them to waive 25 overdraft fees that all happened in the same day. Like if it is clearly from you being a dumbass (like my mom-in-law and unlike H2's wife) no one is going to have sympathy for your problem. If you can make it clear it's a problem that would happen to any reasonable person & it won't happen again, that helps, too, imo.

1) Put bogus charge on my bill and then offered to refund it "as a courtesy"
2) When I asked them "what about the OTHER bogus charge", the answer is "SORRY, I ALREADY USED UP YOUR COURTESY CREDIT FOR THIS MONTH"
3) Go back and forth with them for a while trying to understand what the hell the charge is about
4) Threaten to leave Verizon
5) "I can refund you the charge as a courtesy" (right, with the courtesy credit you already used up)

FUUUUUUUUCK YOU

Oh and btw, here's what one of the charges was. We have 150 text messages a month on each line. One month, a group of annoying moms from a mom group sent a shitload of group texts in the first week of the month, and by like 6/10 we had already used up a little over 150. So I called to up the number of text messages. Only they forgot to backdate it, and when they don't backdate it they instead PRORATE the old plan up to the plan change date. So they only gave us 50 text messages for that period, which meant we were like 100 messages "over" for that 10 day period. And a lot of them were picture messages, for which they charge like 35 cents each.

So done with Verizon as soon as our contracts are up.

there's no way i send less than 150 text messages a week

yeah I think iphones are set up so you don't get charged for iphone to iphone messages, because otherwise I'm sure I send more too

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/verizons-perma-cookie/

Verizon Wireless has been subtly altering the web traffic of its wireless customers for the past two years, inserting a string of about 50 letters, numbers, and characters into data flowing between these customers and the websites they visit.

The company—one the country’s largest wireless carriers, providing cell phone service for about 123 million subscribers—calls this a Unique Identifier Header, or UIDH. It’s a kind of short-term serial number that advertisers can use to identify you on the web, and it’s the lynchpin of the company’s internet advertising program. But critics say that it’s also a reckless misuse of Verizon’s power as an internet service provider—something that could be used as a trump card to obviate established privacy tools such as private browsing sessions or “do not track” features.

Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, a technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wants Verizon to stop using the UIDH. “ISPs are trusted connectors of users and they shouldn’t be modifying our traffic on its way to the Internet,” he says. He calls the UIDH a “perma-cookie,” because it can be read by any web server that you visit and used to build a profile of your internet habits.

According to Verizon spokeswoman Debra Lewis, there’s no way to turn it off. She says that Verizon doesn’t use the UIDH to create customer profiles, and if you opt out of the company’s Relevant Mobile Advertising program (you can do this by logging into your Verizon account here), then Verizon and its advertising partners won’t be using it to create targeted ads. But that’s beside the point, says Hoffman-Andrews. Because Verizon is broadcasting this unique identifier to every website, ad networks could start using it to build a profile of your web activity, even without your consent.

The fact that the UIDH was around for two years before getting any serious attention is a testament to the murky and challenging nature of privacy on today’s internet. Verizon has made no secret of its ambitions to cash in on the mobile advertising market. But the technical details of how it is doing this have been hard to uncover.

another lovely experience with one of the ladies at Verizon Wireless. she asked me if i would say her service was outstanding and i obviously said yes.

Bumped a different thread not realizing it wasn't on ILE.

Apparently a nationwide outage right now. My phone has been on "SOS" for the last half hour or so (at least since I first noticed).

No problems with Verizon voice or data service in my part of Georgia

No problem for me, but my wife is impacted. (She's at home, I'm in the office a few miles away.)

Yeah, seems inconsistent, but reports from all over the country.

my phone is still working, but visiting relatives have 3 phones on SOS (Apple and Android). they stopped in the very busy Verizon store and word was they expect it back up in a couple hours.

Mine is still in "SOS", sounds like Verizon is spinning a little on this. They are telling people "all carriers" are facing the same issue, but at least one of them (AT&T) has come out to say, "uh, no, we're good".

Was just reading about how Verizon is setting up temporary cell towers in North Carolina to try and give people service, so that seems like bad timing.

Yeah, that's what I keep thinking about. Like I'm just mildly inconvenienced, but thinking of folks in the Southeast that just may finally have gotten some cell service back only for Verizon to shit the bed.

Was out for like 4 hours for me today, my neighbor was unaffected at all lol.
Going for a walk in Santa Monica noticed cops outside a Verizon store with coplights on, can only imagine someone just fucking RAGED at the hapless clerks in there