Verizon Wireless and getting a cell phone
Posted by rbultje at August 26th, 2007
Today, I was in a Verizon Wireless shop, trying to buy a cell phone. Actually, I was just trying to get my old one fixed, it broke for the 3rd time within a year (LG is completely crap, so it seems). Instead of getting a new item of the same old crappy LG, I just wanted something else, so I told the sales guy that I wanted a new phone “that wouldn’t break within a year”. He says: “oh, so you want a high-end phone kind of thing?” (oh-my-god, so it is supposed to break within a year unless you pay extra?), bringing me to the realm of vcast (some kind of post-stamp sized video on demand system or so), car navigation and that kind of fancy. When I told him I really wanted a phone, we went back to the cheap models and he asked how exactly my old phone was broken, so I told him the battery was always empty within a few hours (all previous models just wouldn’t turn on after a few weeks-months). So, he says: “oh, yes, they have a Lithium ion battery, you shouldn’t charge it overnight!” (oh-my-god, talking about a complete failure of engineering; who designs these phones/batteries, a bunch of lunatics?).
I went over to the purchase of a cheap actual phone (one of those things that you can just make phone calls with). So, he refers me to his colleague salespeople, because his computer is broken. They tell me: “Sorry sir, the network is broken, we can’t handle purchases today.” (oh-my-god, for just so many reasons). After coming back later, I was referred back to the original guy, who referred me to customer service to re-pay a late phone bill that I paid by mail yesterday but they hadn’t handled yet, then back to the original guy, who gave me a piece of paper and referred me back to the customer service to actually pick up the phone, who referred me to technical support to get my phone numbers transferred from the old to the new phone, who referred me back to the customer service for actual payment, who referred me back to the sales guy to get coupons for refund of the phone cost. Oh-my-, oh-my-, oh-my-god. I think I talked with 6 people in total, all in all it took over an hour. How inefficient is that?
Verizon Wireless is seriously screwed up.
I’d recommend T-Mobile. They’re pretty freakin schweet. Affordable and decent support and GSM instead of CDMA. My SDA is a windows mobile device and I can fanagle it to act as a mass storage usb device.
I don’t know if blackberry’s or Nokia’s are better, but if you just need a phone, all this is irrelevant. Also, google for “Tmobile minutes used firefox extension” and you can get your minutes in your firefox statusbar.
Cheers.
It’s not just Verizon I’ve had similar brain dead experiences at other US cell carriers.
And to top it all off, forget about bringing your favorite phone from another service to them; they don’t use SIM cards.
i jumped off the mobile roundabout several months ago and chucked my BigFourTelco handset out the window. Now my primary number is from http://grandcentral.com which i can pick up with the gizmo project, or the Virgin Mobile prepaid handset that only cost me $20 and fifteen minutes on the phone with custopmer service and that’s only because I didn’t want to do it over the web.
I’m not surprised. Cell phones are admittedly useful, but I just can’t stand the thought of buying one. Everybody hates their phone, and everybody hates their service, and it always looks like they have good reason to. So no phone for me.
My favorite part is how Verizon (”It’s the network”) can’t make a sale because the network is down.
yup… gsm all the way. you can just buy whichever phone you like, whereever you like, and transfer your sim-card.
Hey bro, i’ve got 2 Nokia gsm’s here. Just the old-fashioned kinda phones that just ‘talk’. Nothing with GPS, GPRS, UMTS, etc.
wanna have one?
Wat een stelletje prutsers daar zeg!