3-4-11

You hear about telemarketing scams all the time. How unscrupulous callers violate your privacy, calling you in your home to sell you something you probably don’t need or don’t even know exists, and in the end, probably doesn’t really exist. Misrepresenting facts to “get you to sign on the dotted line.“ Typically this occurs from complete strangers, not usually from companies you’re contracted with.

On 3-2-11, a sales representative from VERIZON WIRELESS LOYALTY DEPARTMENT made an unsolicited call to my cell phone to which they have been a service provider to me for about 5 years, to “check on my current plan and make sure that it still meets my needs, go over other plans available, and inform me of any current promotions.” After explaining to me my plan, how many minutes I’ve used on my last statement, how many excess minutes I had, and me telling her I did not wish to make any changes until I researched the iphone4, she told me of a current promotion. She said that in addition to the current $100 off for customer loyalty, that I could receive an additional discount on the new iphone4. When I asked the price, she quoted me $49 for the 16 gig iphone4. I mentioned that I was interested in the one with the most memory, how much would that be? She quoted me $59 for the 32 gig. Well, needless to say this got me interested as I knew they were going for about $200 after the basic discounts. I wanted to call a friend and ask if this was a good deal, but I would have to hang up and she would lose the call. So I asked her if it made a difference if she were the one who signed me up for the deal. She said, “it makes a difference to me!” This indicates that they are on some sort of commission structure. So, being the loyal customer I am, I called my friend on my land line and we agreed that this would be a great deal and I decided to go ahead with it.

I was on the phone with her for about 40 minutes discussing the various plans and options available to me, and on several different occasions asked her to verify the $49 and $59 price for the iphone4 16 and 32 gig respectfully, which she did. After a very long wait while she entered the transaction into their system did she decide to inform me that the sales tax would be charged on the full retail price of the phone which was $749 and the tax for this transaction would be $73.12. Hello SCAM. That is their policy that on special promotions they tax on the full retail price. This is where it gets interesting. When she quoted me the full price, which was going to be on my next bill it was $273. That really doesn’t make sense, $59 + 73.12 = $132.12. It seems that after promising me this loyalty low discounted price, that they were going to charge me the standard $199 + 73.12 sale price. The other selling point that she stressed was that there is a 14 day return policy when purchased via the online store as opposed to 0 when purchased from a brick and mortar store. Had I not realized that I was being SCAMMED, I would have lost my current plan, been stuck to a new 2 year plan, and probably had to pay a restocking fee as she told me that once I changed from my old plan, I could not get it back. I have made several calls back to the number, have learned that there is a recording of the call, was told I would be contacted by a supervisor twice, and have still not heard from anyone.

If the VERIZON LOYALTY DEPARTMENT believes that lying to, wasting an hour of their time, and scamming them back into a contract is a way of showing appreciation to their long term customers, then they really need to re-examine this department or disband it completely. If this is how I’m treated, I’m going elsewhere I advise anyone else considering their service to do the same.


Sincerely,


Robert *******

P.S. It has been almost a week and I have not been contacted by a supervisor.

I was hired as an employee with Alltel in 2006 and Verizon ended up purchasing Alltel and we became Verizon employees. Back in May 2009 my wife was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer at the young age of 29!! I was on FMLA from June till October and when I came back I began to go through hell!! I am one of about 100 maybe black men in our 60, 000 population and the only black employee for Verizon in this part of the state and probably the entire state if my guess is correct. When I came back to work, our old Alltel store had been closed and all the employees they kept had been moved to the Verizon store that had be opened for a long time prior to the buyout. When I came back to work after my FMLA ran out there were a handful of employees that thought making all kinds of racial jokes and comments to me as a black man was funny. An employee even said in front of two customers and while I was with my customer, "Let me move this big gorilla out the way and he pushed me aside...This was done on the floor and it front of customers. I was asked to use my lips for pulling plastic off the price tag displays. Many more things were said over and over. I went to my district manager and HR rep and complained and I knew from the jump they could care less. They gave me their spill about being there for me and that this would be addressed and handled quickly and if I needed anything else to let them know. Two days later two more reps made racial comments to me.

When they questioned me again they totally flipped my complaint over to me. They asked if I participated in jokes and comments with reps about sexual jokes and comments and I said yes. Every single rep plays around and they totally decided to not worry about my complaint but to focus on that. Time went on and things kept happening. I caught a manager talking to reps about me negatively and I complained and nothing happened. Matter of fact, I have emails where HR and my store manager lied in regards to this matter. I went to the state as well and started a formal complaint with the Idaho State human rights commisssion. To make a long story short, I got called in on Thursday of this past week and was terminated for me participating like everyone else in jokes and comments. NOONE else was fired at all...I was even told that one employee that I had complained about with the racial comments was fired and that is a lie!! He quit and put in his two week notice to go work somewhere else.

Now my wife cannot do her radiation for the last part of this cancer fight because I have no insurance.

Now I have no job...

Noone but me in all of this was terminated...

I am getting an attorney and fighting all of this because I feel I have a case of, wrongful termination, racial discrimination, retaliation, and pain and suffereing...


any comments...


There is much to it just dont feel like typing it all

My work uses verizon, so I was switching from sprint to take advantage of my works discount. They wanted a $400 deposit due to my credit, ok no problem just got my tax return I'll bite the bullit and just do it.

Ok well checked my card statment and they charged me the $449.99 twice! this is where thing started to go very very wrong. I figure well its a mistake thing happen, so I call them to get the second charge reversed. They deny it happened. I fax per there request my card statment, and all requested info, 3 seperate times. I also email it about 4 times. After spending hours upon hours on the phone them asking me to resend it. Double and triple checked the fax number and email.

After a week they tell me they are not issuing a refund and closing the claim due to lack of info provided!! Are you kidding me? I have been very polite and civil this entire time, even after being hung up on by 2 different agents on the phone. But now I am beyond upset. I called today to restart the process again.

Im at the end of my rope here this is not the way to treat a new customer. They have MY MONEY, is this illegal? Should I seek legal advise if this proceed?

1. Contacted Verizon to change my phone number to my new area code, was told it was no problem but it's best to change it on the 7th of the month so there won't be any pro-rated charges. Whatever, that's what I did.
2. On February 7th, I contacted VW again to change my number, everything went fine, powered phone off and then back on, *228, worked great, gave out the new number to all my contacts and associates.
3. Unable to receive calls - WTF? Contact VW, they tell me they CANNOT fix it. What? It worked before, now they say I have to either get a NEW number or wait until the 8th of March when the new number will go into effect.
4. Outraged I asked to terminate my contract without the ETF, they refused! What in the world happened to their once stellar customer service? They don't care if they lose me as a customer - and I've been a loyal customer of theirs for over 10 years. Very disgusted and disappointed. Cell service is limited out here, maybe I can just use an online service like Google Voice and have a cell phone for emergencies.
Verizon, you blew it, and from what I've seen online, your pathetic and contradiction-in-terms "Customer Service" is more common than not.

2/18/11...THIS MORNING I DISCOVERED THAT MY PEAK MINUTES EXCEEDED MY 700 PLAN (1725 USED) AND I STILL HAD TIL MARCH 5TH !!! I CALLED VERIZON ONCE (10 MIN), TWICE (15 MIN) AND THEN A THIRD TIME (25 MIN) AFTER DISCOVERING THAT WHEN I CHANGED MY PLAN AT THE BEGINING OF MY BILLING CYCLE, MY MOBILE TO MOBILE WAS REMOVED?????? WHY!!! I DID MY OWN PEAK MINUTE CHECK TEST...I CHECKED MY PEAK MINUTES VIA TEXT (422), MY 2 SONS 635 EA, THEN CALLED MY SISTER'S CELL PHONE TALKED 3 MINUTES, THEN I RE-CHECKED MY PEAK MINUTES VIA TEXT AND NOW ITS 425???? I ALSO KEEP MY CALL HISTORY FOR MONTHS AND I WENT BACK AND CACULATED ALL LAND/BUSINESS LINES TOO (130 ESTI). NOW THE 3RD REPRESENTIVE WILL HELP AND FOLLOW-UP. THE OTHERS DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO...YOU CAN'T PRORATE, BACK-DATE, UP-DATE, TOLD TO CHECK PEAK MINUTES FREQUENTLY (I'VE ONLY HAD A CELL FOR 12 YEARS, SHE GAVE ME 450 BONUS MINUTES (IN THE PAST DOESN'T HELP YOUR PRIOR USUAGE) AND "YES MS. SAN !!! YOU ARE MOBILE TO MOBILE TOO"??????