VERIZON WIRELESS RANT (and a little record keeping to boot) (also TLDR warning, heh) [View all]

[Kali]

As a few of you know, I have been on glacially slow dial up for more than 10 years. A couple of weeks ago I lost even that due to wind, a tiny bit of rain, and a bird nest. At least I have it back on because that event finally made me start the process to get a faster connection and apparently I REALLY need my dial up for that.

It has just been one fuck up after another.

All I have available out here is dial-up over 70 + year old phone lines, satellite (which everybody seems to say is almost as bad as dial-up, in some cases worse) or wireless broadband from Verizon. (despite at least 6 2-inch underground conduits' worth of fiber optic passing less than 150 feet from my house - fuck you AT&T) We have had cell phones with them forEVER. (although there were a couple years we had Altell when Verizon wasn't technically available out here - prior to that a whiz tech person had rigged up some route through Nogales for us to keep a Tucson number, but one time when we got a new phone nobody could figure out how we were even on the system) A few years ago Verizon bought Altell out so we were back with them again.

Mostly the service is pretty good and tech support is in-country which I appreciate. Things out on a ranch are hard enough to explain to urban Americans, trying to explain to people outside of the country are much more difficult.

Two of the squids have (now unavailable) unlimited data plans on their smart phones. One of them is ...um, hard on the brick-a-brack, if you know what I mean and goes through about 3 phones a year. The last time he destroyed it he went almost two months before he came up with the $$ for a new one. In that time I had the brilliant idea to see if I could transfer his data plan to an air card for my laptop. I called Verizon and whoever said sure we could do that. I didn't do it then because I needed to make sure it was going to be OK with the kid. So the next time I called to see about maybe going ahead with it and getting a new plan for him, the person almost laughed at me. No way to do that.

Next time I called I had looked on-line at their website and found a used, er "certified pre-owned" modem for $50 with a 2 year contract but when I tried to get the price for month to month bills it gave me the full brand new price. The person I talked to said she could set it up for me to get the month to month and the device at the used price. I can't remember why I didn't do it right then but it is probably related to my difficulty in justifying to myself the $50 a month for a LIMITED amount of data. Anyway, I finally got to that mental space and called to order the thing. Well as you can imagine, suddenly no I can't have a used one and month to month billing. Fuckers. I do not want to commit to a 2 year contract on this becasue I don't know if a) I can actually afford it and b) it will really work out!

So I did what we do when the kids lose or destroy a phone before contract renewal time - got a used device off the internet. (GoOverstock.com through Amazon gets a rec from me here) It got here in 3 days through the US Postal service. The way I prefer to have things shipped. Because then I have all day to go AT MY LEISURE, and pick it up at the post office. FedEx and UPS won't come down our road (and I DO NOT blame them - FUCK YOU AGAIN AT&T, fix your goddamn right-of-way once this century, huh?)

When I got it I called Verizon to see about getting the SIM card for it. "Oh you can just stop at a Veriozon store and get one for free!" Uh I live 20 miles from the nearest town and the "verizon store" is the local Radio Shack which I hate. (this was last Thursday I think) "Well we can ship it FedEx to you and it will get there by Monday free!" arrggg. I decide that somebody will be going to town before Monday so tell them I will get one in town. We go ahead and set up the account so all I will have to do is activate the thing when I get the sim card. Next day find out Radio Shack is no longer a Verizon vendor (I can imagine why, the owner is...let's just say he seems to enjoy his cocktail hour all day long). Walmart has Verizon products, though so send the kids over there to pick one up. They want $20 for it. Fuck that I am way too much of a tightwad for that! Another call to Verizon and another attempt by me to get them to pass a customer comment up the food chain about their delivery policies. I would rather wait extra DAYS and get things at the post office than have to try to meet a private-company driver who often has no cell phone.

I watch the tracking on line all weekend and on Tuesday call FedEx to make sure whatever office this is going to go from onto the truck knows to either call me or tell the driver to when he/she gets to Benson so I can meet them at the end of our road (or wherever) Yesterday I sat around all morning waiting and they finally called around 11. Got my new sim card - all excited - going to get on line, load some pix my sister emailed from Egypt that I can't even open on dial-up and maybe come post them on DU!!! yahoo, right?!! Oh HELL no.

Nothing works, can't get the frigging thing to connect, tech support can't figure it out, finally they decide my previous call didn't set up the new account right and they send me to sales...this person can't seem to grasp anything I tell her and finally INSISTS the company I bought the device from had set me up with a contract to go through them and that is why she can't activate - have to do it through them. I am like WTF? no way no way no way, the whole point of ordering a USED device from an ELECTRONIC RETAILER was to AVOID a contract. There is NOTHING about connecting through them or any kind of contracts ANYWHERE in the order, delivery emails, or paper invoice. So I had to contact them to ask WTF. They (GoOverstock.com - another little rec from me) were pretty cool and sent a good e-mail with clear instructions and mentioned sometimes the commissioned sales people have some "trouble" connecting you when they don't actually get a commission due to the way you are doing things. I try the instructions, which were to go on-line and activate that way. My first problem is entering the sim card's ID number - "a number on the card between 15 and 19 digits" mine had 20. Error message can not activate at this time call 800-xxx-xxxx.

SOOOO I call Verizon back AGAIN and get a pretty good tech guy that checks things out and runs interference for me with the next sales person so we can get the fricking thing set up right. Why? because when the damn device wouldn't connect right the first time the sim card got automatically "retired". Not only do I need to set up a new account again, but they need to send me another sim card.

JEEBUS

But wait it isn't over by a long shot! They try to kiss my ass a little by sending it free overnight! oooh. So yesterday evening these e-mails start rolling in. First an order confirmation. Ok good. Then a shipping notice - cool. Wait - it says it is being shipped USPS. WTF? I thought they couldn't do that? Wow that guy was good and he really listened to my bitching! Click on tracking number and get a "can't find" message. Ok maybe it is just not in the system yet, no biggie. Then I get another shipping notice. And a third one. The second one's numbers matched the ones in the original order confirmation but none of the tracking numbers get anything but an error not found message. Oh well I will worry about it in the morning.

Try everything again this morning. All error not found for the tracking numbers. Try to call customer service. not in until 6. go do some chores, try again. Talk to somebody. They are ALL confused. On hold while person confers with their "team". Comes back with a helpful message.

Current status/knowledge? My order should be here "soon", disregard those 4 e-mails - system errors, coming FedEx, no tracking number available yet, there was some "problem" with the 4G sims yesterday. That is it.

Oh wait, he offered to get me the FedEx 800 number. Hi FedEx? Do you have a random package from Verizon for me somewhere? No I don't have any numbers or any idea where it was shipped from, or even what address they put on it for delivery. Maybe your driver could just stop at a Verizon store in Tucson or Sierra Vista and pick up a new sim card for me? They are supposed to be free.

I'm just sitting here going

edit: just checked my e-mail and they sent me some spam about a sale on 4G smartphones!!!