I found myself in this predicament last night, and after much frustration online, I called my local Verizon store to see what they could do. And what they could do, it turns out, is wheedle me, upsell me, and insult me. But no good deal on a phone.
I laid it all out for everyone I spoke to. I have a contract, but no phone. I don't want to pay retail for a phone (even the crummiest pieces of garbage phones -- the ones they give away -- are $150 retail). I'm willing to do any kind of red tape shenanigans to get a cheap phone; restart the contract, cancel and get a new contract, invoke a lesser demon from the planet Voltron. I don't care how it happens, but I want a first-generation enV (a modest, middle of the road phone) for not much more than the $130 contract price. This is not brain surgery.
The guy on the phone is optimistic. He says, "Come in and ask for Joe or Katie. Under no circumstances should you talk to Angie. If you have to, you can talk to Sandy. But Joe is the best. Come after 7:00pm and ask for Joe. He'll definitely be able to do it for you."
So I follow his instructions. I leave my house in Isle La Motte around 6:30pm and get to the Verizon store in SoBu an hour later. Harry meets me at the door and I run down the issue with him. His first response is that I'm in a bad situation. He says it with gravity, as if I've got necrosis of the foot and I'm not actually talking about discounting a piece of plastic and wires. I reason with him.
"I want to pay you monthly. I even want to pay for the phone. They have it online for $80 with a contract, so clearly the price on the phone is oh-so-flexible, and I'm even willing to pay your $130 posted price. I just won't pay over that."
"Yeah... you really don't have any options," is his answer.
I wait for a moment. I probably blink antagonistically a few times. "Really, is that it? You're recommending I just cancel the contract?"
"Yeah," he replies.
I mention I was told to come down and Joe would hook me up. His face brightens (because Joe is clearly the doer of all things) and runs off to tell Joe that I need his help. At this point, Joe is helping someone. It's an interesting kind of helping, which involves him standing nearby while a customer speaks on the store phone to someone she knows about what type of phone to get. But fine, he's busy, and he knows I'm waiting, so I play with phones and wait.
Forty-five minutes later, I'm still waiting. I look over at Harry, who goes back to Joe and has a little powow. Harry comes back with this little tidbit:
"Uh, Joe says you have the protection plan, so you can report the phone stolen and he can give you the one-year price [of $250] for the new phone."
See if you can find the hole in that plan. Remember, I'm returning the phone to my old employer because they paid for it and it's legally theirs. Got it yet? I turn to Harry.
"Which would mean, I assume, that when my company goes to use the phone, it will be reported as stolen and unusable."
"Uh... yeah. I guess you can't do that. You'll have to talk to Joe."
I head back to play with the phone and Joe finally comes over. We aren't five words into the discussion when I realize I'm with a guy who thinks he's a "closer." He's got that salesman lilt to his voice. Like he's over-acting some kind of monologue to distance himself from the ridiculous words that are coming out of his mouth. Let me recreate this gem of a soliloquy:
"Let me run down the 'logic' here. You bought a phone from us, a nice phone, from over there. [He gestures at the PDA/Smartphone rack.] You paid what, like $500? So you spent $500 with us. And you have the lowest plan. Now I'm not saying that's bad, but that takes, like, eighteen months to recoup that. So you're paying $40 a month over two years and that's like a thousand dollars. And it'll take us time... you know, to make that back. Do you see my 'logic' here?"
I was not seeing his logic here. The way I saw it, I gave them $500 already, as well as $80 monthly (phone and data service). It wasn't entirely clear what they needed to "recoup." He continued.
"What I can do for you is this. You need to get accessories, right? You'll need a bluetooth package, a case, and a car charger, and the Vcast service to get your music, right? So I can sell you the phone for the one-year price if you'll buy those bundles. And I'll even discount them!"
Keep in mind that these bundles together (discounted) equal $109 plus $15 monthly. Added to the $250 1-year phone price, I would get a better deal just paying retail for the phone instead of taking all of the junk I don't need.
I simply responded, "I have accessories, and I have an iPod for music."
He sighed dramatically and started to explain the "logic" again, as if I was dumb. As if I wasn't getting how paying $539 was better than paying $350 for a phone which was clearly marked $130 and sells online for $80. They'll be giving these things away in Cracker Jack boxes in two months. He spoke fast, mixed metaphors, and threw in all kinds of obscure concepts. I've seen this in other people whose aim is to confuse and intimidate you. It was at that point that I realized that Joe had no interest in helping me get a non-retail phone. He also had no interest in keeping my business. I realized, disappointed, that I was going to have to walk away.
I smiled, and said,"No thanks, I'll just cancel the contract." I'm sure it was that icy cold smile that those who know me have come to recognize and enjoy. It's the "I'm done with you, but I'm pretending to be nice, so let's pretend together and get this over with," smile. Joe has never seen this smile, so can you blame him for doing the exact wrong thing?
"Awww, now you're upset," he goaded. "Don't be upset if you just can't see the 'logic' here."
It was the low blow of a man who knows he just lost the sale and is lashing out with one last-ditch effort to shame me into a purchase after trying to confuse me into a purchase. He knew it too, he would barely look at me as he completed the contract cancellation.
The kicker is that I went online and bought the same phone for $80 this morning. Even with the cancellation fee, it cost much less than the 1-year price plus accessories that Joe offered; however, I found that my SSN was flagged for credit review -- odd, because if my credit score were a phone number, it would be toll-free. Could Joe have had his revenge after all?
UPDATE: After two hours in the Verizon store last night cancelling the account, it turns out my account was not really cancelled. It was just fakely cancelled. Even though I have a little slip of paper that says the disconnect date was 05/29/08. And even though I can no longer make or receive calls, texts or emails on the phone itself.
I was told by someone at the Verizon phone center that I needed to go back to the store and re-cancel. A two hour round-trip to do, again, what I thought I did successfully last night. So I called the store to circumvent a road trip and guess who I got... what do you know, Joe!
Joe had this to say: "Well, like we discussed last night, your account was cancelled, but you would have service until June 21st."
And I had this to say: "Except the phone is disconnected now. So I don't really have service, and I'm paying through June 21st for absolutely nothing."
Listen folks, I am a hoop-jumper and a rule-follower. If you give me a set of parameters, I'll work within them. But on the flip side, I expect that when I fulfill my end of the bargain, you'll fulfill yours too. I played along with the little Verizon game of cancelling my work contract to get a personal contract, and paying the cancellation fee out of my own pocket just to make some phone calls, but now I'm ticked. Like I told the gent at the call center, I'm about two seconds away from ditching Verizon and going to Unicel. I have the Unicel plans web page open and my mouse is hovering.
I don't like getting testy with people who work in service -- really, I'm the woman who waited, smiling and joking, in the Shaw's line for 20 minutes last night while the register rebooted and lost my order. Service jobs are hard and stuff goes wrong. But today I'm snappish with the Verizon guys. There's a willfulness to their idiocy. They're already sticking me with fees and red tape, now they're even messing up their own insane procedures.
ATTENTION VERIZON: This would have all been moot if you would have let me pay you $130. I wanted to pay you $130.
FINAL (I hope) UPDATE: I managed to get the contract cancelled for real real and the new phone will arrive Monday, but not before Joe called me back, insisting on speaking to "Helen." I told him a few times it was me he spoke to previously, not this mythical Helen, but he was adamant. (Helen doesn't even sound like Tara.) Eventually, I told him I'd give Helen the message.
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