Smart Phone, Stupid Carrier

It all started when I dropped my phone yesterday.

Having purchased insurance for my phone, I felt covered. I would be receiving a new phone at “no additional cost,” the very next day, as my Verizon Wireless sales agent so kindly described to me a year ago when I added insurance to my plan.

A few minutes later, I found myself on the line with agent at Asurion, Verizon’s insurance partner, and the agent was instructing me there is a deductible of $199.

“That’s strange,” I said. Nobody mentioned any deductible.

The agent said, “you know, every insurance plan has a deductible.”

Not true. Many insurance plans offer no deductible. In fact, a few years back I was on just such a insurance plan with Verizon and I received a new smartphone without paying any deductible.

Call me sneaky, but I hung up the phone and called Verizon as a new customer, intending to find out if what I heard a year ago was still the case.

When I asked about insurance, the agent repeated the phrase to me, almost word-for-word, “If your phone is lost, stolen or broken, it will be replaced at no additional cost.”

This phrase is not to be confused with the manufacturer’s warranty, which states the same, but relating to defects, not theft, loss or breakage.

Now I will admit, it must be very confusing to sales agents, repeating all these stock phrases, which must be drilled into their heads. If a little slip of the tongue were to result in an additional insurance sale, no harm done, right?

That’s another few million every month just from slip ups.

Imagine if you could make that kind of dough merely from slipping up.

Couldn’t hurt to encourage such behavior in salespeople, right? Salespeople want to sell more stuff. That’s how they get promoted.

I hung up the phone and called Verizon as myself, their customer, because I thought the matter could be easily resolved.

I knew I could get a better deal on my monthly service, which could result in covering the $199.

So, they offered me a new plan, “the best they could do,” going on to say, “we can only offer these promotions because you’ve been such a loyal customer.”

Don’t you just love it when people slap you in the face? I love it.

When I pointed out their new customer plans were cheaper than what they were offering me, they stopped offering me anything. They seemed kind of put out that I had looked at the cost of the new plans.

Proving to be the mammoth they are, they would not, they should not, they could not budge. Not even an inch.

But I’m not a dinosaur. I’m a mammal. I can survive not just a couple of baldface lies, but a massive meteor striking the face of the earth.

I could change. I would change. I should change.

So, I called Asurion back and paid the $199 and long story short: I’m in the market for another carrrier.

Don’t get me wrong. I like dinosaurs, but there’s a reason we are walking on their graves.

One day, I’ll tell my children about the long lost reptilian carriers. They’s say, “What did that one eat, Daddy?”

And I’ll say, “That one there, the one with the big red ‘v?’ That one survived on lies.”