Ok I want to share my day with the forum because over half of it was spent dealing with Verizon to get my service restarted correctly. First of course, I did select "delete now" not realizing what **** I was going to put myself through. So once I went about trying to reactivate *ROTFL* my service, it was readily apparent I wasn't going to get anywhere on my own -- unlike with AT&T.
So I stopped by a Verizon kiosk in the mall, which was actually the quickest and easiest part of the day. The rep understood what I was saying about needing a sim, and made a quick call to her supervisor to confirm that a LTE sim was the right solution. The only problem was she wouldn't give it to me without getting $20 first. I wouldn't agree to do that, so I left for a brick and mortar. Very simply I hadn't read this forum yet, but knew from getting a post-payment sim swap by AT&T before when my sim died, that I only wanted to get a new sim and go prepaid on the iPad directly; no cost, no tax, don't pass go, don't let them collect your dollars! And yes AT&T can and will pull the post-paid trick on customers who need new sims if they don't know any better (taxes and fees included).
So at the store I spent over 2 hours. The first hour explaining what happened and what I need -- they understood but were unwilling to give it to me. Used the "inventory control" bulls hit, and put me on the customer service line in store. I spent the other hour on hold... I left after an hour because I didn't feel like living in their store any longer. It was interesting that they gave up the entire second register area after getting me on the phone. No customers or Verizon reps cane within ten feet of me. They must have known I would be on an indefinite hold?! They also refused to let me use their restroom too, which is why I decided more than anything to take the call at home.
At home I found this forum. Read the entire thing waiting for customer support to do something for me. They tried to get me on a data share -- I refused. They tried to get the first store to agree to give me a sim -- they refused too. They lookup up my old account to see if there was anything they could resolve -- it didn't work. They refused to mail me a sim, because "Verizon doesn't mail anything to customers"... Really? That's what they say, no bills, no special deals, nothing. Too bad AT&T doesn't follow that business model too because we get at least one junk mail a week from them. So eventually, they told me there were only two options. One not to use 4G (waste of a good iPad). Two, go to another store. They even contacted the next nearest store to confirm that a sim would be waiting for me, right? Total talk time by the way was 95 minutes.
Off to the second store I went. When I got there I was surprised to find one of the sales reps was expecting me. Only that wasn't the rep to "help" me. We went over the usual, no post paid, no data sharing, no tying to other accounts, nothing but prepaid and controlled by settings on the iPad. I used the term "I want to set it up like it is right out of the box". This seemed to get the picture across more easily. Still something interesting had happened too...
****Key point**** The rep asked if anyone had reactivated the original account yet. I told him that I didn't think it was possible, but he wanted to try. Why not, I said. So he did a couple of quick taps and said to give it a try. I almost thought it would work when the LTE came back up, but it had no Internet connection. The dialog to view the account for data plans came up, but when I tried to add more data it popped up a message to check the account on Verizon.com. So I told him that it wasn't what it was supposed to be "like out of the box".
So then the wait began, he got out a shiny new sim, but wanted to activate it. I told him repeatedly that it needed to be "like out if the box" setup prepaid on my iPad. But he was frustrated on the computer, making calls to customer service and got put on hold just like me before. That was hilarious (hard not to laugh, but I resisted)! Eventually when he couldn't get it to work on the point of sale, he gave in and let me put the new sim in my iPad. Great! Within ten minutes it was back up and running; don't forget to reprovision in the general settings menu at the bottom, otherwise it won't work right until you do. The rep wasn't happy, but I was. He wanted to keep the old sim and balance his books using my new sim phone number. Fine by me since I'm back on the $20 prepaid plan and can view my account controls directly on the iPad.
It only took me half a day, and some added travel time -- but it was the principle of the matter. Don't give in to these stupid sales tactics and you too can get what you deserve. Now let me get over to the FCC to file that complaint on deceptive sales practices too! Oh, and I will be going back to the first store again to give the store manager some constructive face-to-face feedback too!!!
