To: Verizon personnel
Re: New phone via “upgrade”
Date: June 13, 2011
I am in receipt of my new contract for the next two years – not that I care about it – or the stated, whopping penalty fee of $175 if the contract is terminated. (Hopefully, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and medical institutions will not drain my monthly bank account, at any time in my rapidly-growing senior years, to force me to have to break the contract.) The “upgrading” via this new 2-year contract has been nothing less in my personal life than comparable to the tornado in Joplin, Missouri. I was swept off my feet by a Verizon dealer, slammed into a wall with lies and ignorance by other Verizon dealers with whom I had to inquire, and I still remain in a psychological coma over the entire ordeal.
On May 30, I agreed to accept a “new phone” (via a Lucy Rivera young salesgirl at the Verizon kiosk at the Gulfview Mall in Port Richey, FL). I was given the new phone (after having to ask how the phone’s camera worked – a new accessory to me – and other questions). At the time of the sale, I was also promised by this Rivera girl a new car charger for the phone would be sent to me (at no cost to me) totally free, since the charger to my old phone would not fit the new phone.
That car charger was going to be sent the very next day, May 31 when it arrived at the kiosk. On Sat., June 4, 2011, I had still not received the promised car charger. I called the cell phone number of Ms.Rivera, only to receive someone talking Spanish. At the time, I did not have the kiosk’s phone number, and being 40 miles away from it, I was not going to make the trip to Gulfview Mall to create some kind of a disaster scene over some kind of a promised free car charger, especially since I had nothing in writing (or in the contract) to prove it. I called again the next day, June 1. Ms. Rivera answered, but this time her story changed to “I said I would send it when it arrived, but I just sent it to you last Saturday.” Taking her word as an honest word, I waited and waited. To date, June 13, the phone’s car charger has not arrived.
In the meantime, since May 30, I have attempted 3 different Verizon stores to purchase the cable to download the pictures. No store carries the cable (although when I call, Verizon sales people tell me they have the cable); however the store in Dade City, FL informed me if I go to Samsung’s website and type in the brand name of the phone, “Samsung Soft,” I could get the cable (and its program/disk-drivers) off its website. Nope. Doesn’t work. Samsung has no such drivers on its site. I’m also told, while at the Inverness, FL store one day, and explaining my problem to sales’ personnel, that Verizon corporate-chain-stores do not have the phone numbers in their computers of Independent Verizon kiosks in other places. (All my literature, and sales papers were at home, so I was simply trying to solve a problem while I was at the Verizon store. Is not Verizon Verizon, whether it’s a store or kiosk? Whether I purchase a new Ford at a big authorized Ford dealership or from a small-corner-lot dealership, is it not still a Ford?)
On June 10, 2011, I visited the Verizon store in Spring Hill, FL and informed him of my problem in looking for a cable and the required disk/program to download the pictures off my phone to my computer. Telling him the name of my phone as a Samsung-Soft, he replied, “Verizon doesn’t sell any Samsung-Soft” phone. “Funny, I replied, “it’s written right on the phone,” and if I had it with me (my wife had it) I’d show it to you. He also added, “You don’t need a program to download the pictures. Once you plug the USB cable into the phone and the computer, it should work.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I quickly replied. “That’s the same thing Ms. Rivera at Verizon’s kiosk at Gulfview Mall told me. I have tried it on 3 XP’s and on one Windows-7. Nothing works.”
Conclusion: Verizon's Samsung-Soft phone, evidently, was made in Outer Mongolia sometime during the Chinese-Japanese War and that’s why, evidently, Ms. Rivera wanted to get rid of it via the “free” sales pitch she gave me. The phone is so old not even Verizon’s personnel can give me accurate info on it, and of course, I not only have a new useless phone for downloading pictures, but am also still holding my breath, waiting for my Verizon’s new promised car charger that was allegedly and positively sent to me almost two weeks ago -- with no e-mail or phone call from Ms.Rivera to the contrary at anytime informing me of anything.
I guess Ms. River's blatant dishonesty supersedes the trite line, “The check is in the mail."
Disgusted,
Wm. J. Kearns
wjk43@earthlink.net
Self-note: Sent with all papers on file via USPS (Inverness, FL)-June 13, 2011 to the only address on the info/contract sheet: P.O. Box 4001, Acworth, GA 30101. (No fax number, no e-mail address, nothing. Delightful. Wastage of money again for postage, letterhead, and envelope.)
