As my gift for Mother’s Day this year I took a chance and asked the hubs if I could get a new phone. I’ve held onto my “semi-smart” phone for the past 4 years now, and a few months after replacing the battery my current one was no longer holding much of a charge so I figured why not go for the gusto and get a real smartphone. Before proceeding with the story that will bring you to a full and complete understanding of the title of this particular post, I’d like to note a few things that have happened since I bought my last phone:
- You can’t just walk into the cell phone store anymore, look at phones and buy a phone. You have to give them your name, your cell number, the password on your account, the reason you are there, your left shoe, various essays you wrote back in the 9th grade, and then they will use their obnoxious little tablet to alert the staff that a customer is in the store who needs help. It’s worth noting that I was the only person in the entire store at the time I entered who did not work there. I was sort of hoping they’d fight over me, but my dreams were dashed when after 5 minutes someone finally came over to assist me. More like drawing straws, I guess.
- Phones now are ginormous. My iPad is smaller than some of these beasts. You pretty much have to be an NBA player to hold one of those things in your hand. The last time I was phone shopping everyone was still trying to get small phones, and the time before that they were all about getting ones so tiny that you could lose it in your pocket. Remember Zoolander? Anyone? Anyone?
- I have officially hit the age where I am the target audience for retail marketing. How do I know this? One word: Music. During my tenure in the store I heard everything from New Kids on the Block to The Cure to PM Dawn. It was like reliving my days in junior high and high school, and that’s exactly the emotional response marketing gurus want to get out of us. However, I don’t think they (or the team at Verizon Wireless) were expecting a middle-aged white chick to prance in and break into the Roger Rabbit once Boyz II Men hit the airwaves. Bobby Brown just does something to me, you guys, I can’t help it.
With that out of the way, here’s why Verizon Wireless thinks they’re the goddamn mafia, in the best recollection of the conversation I had with the lovely young woman (again, aging myself) who was unfortunate enough to draw the short straw this afternoon:
“Okay, so we’re all set with your new phone. I see you are due for an upgrade as you haven’t had a new model since 2008, so I’ll enter that information into the system. Okay, so the total for the phone is going to be $xxx and then there’s the upgrade fee of $30 so your total will come to $xxx.”
“Wait a second, I’m due for an upgrade – you just said so – so I don’t have to pay the early upgrade fee.”
“Oh, no, actually as of April 22 everyone has to pay an upgrade fee of $30.”
“Holy Kiefer Sutherland in assless chaps! Did you just say that Verizon is going to charge me money to spend money? Is that what you just said? And this is just as of 2 weeks ago? Seriously?”
“Well it’s more of a restocking fee.”
“What the hell is there to restock? I’m buying the phone.”
“It’s to restock with a new phone.”
“So Apple charges Verizon $30 to put a new phone on a shelf?”
“No, Ma’am, Verizon does.”
“Verizon charges itself to have the people it’s already paying to put a box on a shelf, and only because someone came in and spent an obscene amount of money on a new product that will create an even larger monthly bill due to requiring a data package for that new, expensive phone to work?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Well I’ll save the $30 and go back there and do it myself.”
“You can’t do that, Ma’am. It’s an upgrade fee.”
“And now we’re back with the upgrade fee. Okay, well is it an upgrade fee or a restocking fee?”
“It’s both.”
“Okay, now I understand. Verizon is now demanding reimbursement from it’s customers for spending more money and for buying out their stock which eventually has to be replaced so that they can make more money. There’s another business that does that – it’s called the Mafia.” (So now the girl is totally laughing her ass off, so don’t think for a second I was being all bitchy towards her and making her cry because that was totally not the case.)
“Well if it makes you feel any better all of the wireless companies do this now, and actually Verizon has the lowest fee among them.”
“No, it does not make me feel better to know that in the world of getting screwed over by a company I have been a loyal customer of for the past decade that I should be happy that at least I’m only getting screwed by the tip, but I appreciate your attempt to make me feel better about it.”
So I called Verizon Wireless to discuss my displeasure with their total b.s. charge and was told by a very polite young man named James (who obviously gets this same call at least a dozen times a day based on his keen memorization of the scripted answers his company gave him) that the fee goes towards a bunch of shit I don’t need, such as workshops on how to use tablets and android phones and apps that will allow me to transfer my contacts easily and quickly. I told him thanks for his time but if he wasn’t going to reverse a charge that I wouldn’t have gotten 2 weeks prior he could get back to his day and take the next call of another unhappy Verizon customer. I asked him to kindly utilize the phrase “your customers think you are douchey” in the feedback for corporate from our conversation, at which point he giggled and told me to have a nice day. Sure, James, I’ll have a fantastic damn day.
