Verizon..Very Vile

More than a year ago I lived in Atlanta Georgia and the number one provider of mobile telephones is AT&T.  I had had a Blackberry telephone for the previous five years and my blackberry was broken so I went to the AT&T store to get it repaired and was told that at the present time that they had no ability to obtain another Blackberry or repair mine but I could look at another phone.  The salesman said the closets thing to what I had was the Apple iPhone 3G.  Having been a PC user for more than 20 years, my skin rebelled against the idea of owning an Apple.  However, there was no other choice and I bought an Apple iPhone 3G.  The learning curve was small because the phone is designed to be self-explanatory even in the data area  After about a month, I came to realize that he Apple iPhone was better than any PC I had ever owned, and it was only a telephone.  I was pleased.  A few months later, I bought my first Apple computer, the new MacBook, I was pleased. It was wonderful, I became a fan of the Apple.

As life progresses, I have found the only thing constant in life is change, my residence in Atlanta was abruptly changed to Springfield, Georgia.  Springfield is a rural community outside of Savannah.  AT&T does not provide any services outside of Savannah. In fact, if I wanted to use AT&T I had to live in down-town Savannah.  I had already chosen my residence in Effingham county a community just a few short miles from the down-town area, and the only carrier of cellular networks in Effingham County is Verizon, who claims to be the worlds largest mobile phone provider. (As does AT&T, everyone is the “largest provider” apparently as they can all legally twist the numbers in their favor, but Wiki does PROVE Verizon have the most users)  I asked them what the closest phone to the Apple iPhone because Apple has signed a contract wit h AT&T to be the sole provider of the Apple iPhone in America, even if they don’t provide a phone service to an area so I could not buy an iPhone and use it on Verizon, even though Verizon was the only provider of Cell phone networks in the area where I lived.   The salesman told me that on the day I came to the provider, that the Droid was the closest thing there was to an iPhone, provided by Verizon, in fact he stated that it was Verizon’s “rip-off” of the iPhone.  To have the same identical service agreement that I had with AT&T for $99 a month I had to pay Verizon $160 a month.  Welcome to rural America!

I asked the salesman if the Droid phone had international capabilities because I travel to Europe.  I was told that the Droid was international capable.  As I later found out, this is not exactly the truth.  The Droid only worked in 7 cities in the entire world outside the US.  No, I did not say 7 countries, I said 7 cities.  None of those cities are in the UK. But Europe’s largest provider is Vodaphone, a Verizon company.  Imagine my frustration as I prepared to depart for Europe and found out that my phone was not GM capable., and therefore not usable in MOST of the civilized world  And so, I worked with Verizon to obtain a phone that was GM capable and that would work in the UK.  I was told that the Blackberry International was the only phone that I could obtain, even though I only needed voice and no data.  One month rental of this phone, even though I was a Verizon customer with a contract, was $259!!.  I already had a contract with Verizon for my Droid, for $189 a month.  The Blackberry telephone did not have a camera.  I could not take any photos and automatically upload them to my account.  Verizon had service contracts with only one company in the UK, Vodafone, so the telephone attempts to seek out Vodafone as a provider, even if a Vodafone tower is the weakest signal the Phone sees.  Once the phone is connected to Vodafone, it can never connect to another network with a better signal, unless the phone is powered off and then turned back on.  Imagine driving through a city, like Manchester UK, where Vodafone is the Verizon company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Wireless provider, however, not the only provider with mobile phone towers, and the Blackberry phone is designed to seek out the strongest signal and connect, so under a conflict of telephone programming and Verizon design, the phone cannot receive or send calls, but doesn’t  tell you if you have moved out of a Vodafone provision area or that your phone is connected to another provider and “blocked” because you are Vodaphone.  And so, a 4-week stay in the UK resulted in a telephone that only worried for 4 days for $260.  Yes, I was dissatisfied as  a customer of Verizon.

When I purchased the Droid, I purchased a service contract in addition to the warranty, so that if any damage occurred to the phone, I could get my phone replaced or repaired.   When I was with AT&T I had done the same thing for my iPhone, under the direction of the salesman. While owner of my Apple iPhone on AT&T, I had cracked the touchscreen.  All I had to do was walk in to the Apple store and they replaced my screen in less than 10 minutes at no charge, because I had purchased the extended warranty.  AT&T was not allowed to work on my Apple iPhone, even though they sold it to me, but luckily, working in Atlanta, there are multiple Apple stores to choose from to recover my telephone quickly.  There are no Apple stores in Savannah GA.

The screen on my Droid is cracked.  I do not know why or how the crack occurred, the phone was not dropped.  However, it was the determination of Verizon, that ANY cracked screen was not a manufacturer defect, it was owner abuse, and therefore it would not be repaired under warranty.  However, I had been a customer that had purchased an extended warranty.  The extended warranty was purchased via a 3rd party company, not Verizon itself and even though I had purchased a contract for $8 a month, to have the phone serviced would cost an additional $100, through my extended warranty program. The service representative at Verizon was very kind and provided me with the phone number or the 3rd party service provider, Asurion.  A quick call that evening provided a pre-recorded message that I should use the internet to complete my claim quickly.  I hung up and immediately began the process of an online claim.  Less than 10 minutes into the claim procedure I was told by the website that claims could not be completed on the web because I would have to fax a copy of my passport or driver’s license to verify that I was indeed the registered owner of the phone, even though my name, address, phone number, and serial number of the phone, all matched my service contract.  I printed out the form and filled it out by hand because it could not be completed online and printed!  I then drove to the nearby Verizon store and asked them to face the document to the fax number printed on the top of the form, and waited for my return phone call within the promised 3 hours.  The next day, still having received no call, I returned to the Verizon store to discover that they were unable to complete my request because the fax number was  not valid.  Verizon had not called me to tell me the fax would not go through.

In comparison to the AT&T and Apple experience, Verizon was becoming VERY unfriendly, and ludicrously expensive.  I have discovered that I can go back to AT&T and get an iPhone, with all of the previous capabilities, for only $99 a month.  Yes, it still will not work in Effingham county, but whenever I leave to go to any other place, it will work.  Even though Verizon has misrepresented the capabilities of the Droid and the cost and features of the service contract, I am locked in to a service agreement that cannot be broken.  To solve my problem with Verizon cost, I can obtain a cheap Verizon phone off E-Bay  and down-grade my account to a non-data, non-text, no voicemail plan and still have my new AT&T iPhone and maintain a Verizon phone, at less cost than I could have my previous Droid plan!  I must maintain a Verizon telephone with the telephone number that I transferred from AT&T because to transfer my number back to AT&T, even if I get another Verizon phone, incurs penalties and additional fees for contract breach; that is how Verizon works.  The motto of the Droid is “In a world of can’t, Droid can”.  What can Droid do better than anyone else?  Screw you and cost you more money!

My recommendation to all providers of mobile phones to their employees; avoid Verizon if this is an example of their top-of-the-line product and service.