My day was poisoned by Verizon and Asurion, one of them is a nationwide wireless carrier, the other is an insurance company. They are the Reese’s Cup to my wasted blown-out day. Thanks guys.

Situation: Coworker breaks iPhone, takes it to a Verizon store, nothing comes of it. Coworker gives me the dead phone and I try to make heads or tails out of the knotwork that is Verizon and Asurion.

Email 1: (me writing to Verizon Rep, upset at being lead on a wild goose chase for most of the day, MIKGOVTEAM is an email to a bunch of people who are supposed to help me, a part of Verizon’s Customer Care … Team.)

Hello,
Thanks for the resolution on this problem. I have contacted Asurion and completed the affidavit. My client indicated that the report that the device was exposed to water is incorrect, it fell face-first onto a concrete surface. Because this is the word of our coworker versus a Verizon store we have issued new policies for our clients to not approach Verizon ever again because of these miscommunications. Instead all of our clients will route their phone issues through my office and we will contact Verizon directly where the conditions of the events can be exchanged clearly and without any of this miscommunication. We are unused to how Verizon conducts it’s business because of our previous relationship with Sprint and Asurion when it came to handling insurance. Sprint acted as our representative to Asurion, which differs fundamentally to how Verizon manages the three-party relationship. This too has changed our policies and procedures when dealing with your company and when dealing with Asurion. It is rather upsetting as a customer to know that Verizon stores cannot be trusted, cannot provide services, and that our only contact is MIKGOVTEAM.
The only thing keeping us as your customers is your network.
Pray for the health of that network.

Response from Verizon:
Andy, I am sorry to hear that you don’t seem to value the service my team and I provide. There are many reasons for VZW Government contracted customers to only be able to work directly through the Government team, the main one being security. The stores are restricted on what they can see, they can’t see government accounts.
I would be happy to meet with you to discuss the many other reason for our decision to not allow retail environments access to your account, I can assure you it is to your benefit.

My final email to Verizon:

The entire reason for us having a mobile infrastructure is first and foremost for our major gift directors and engagement team to have as much of a reliable wireless connection as I can provide for them. Verizon was selected because Verizon’s network is the largest in the United States and therefore won by default. Verizon wasn’t selected initially in the past because of a difference in toolsets provided by Verizon and Sprint. Sprint has proven themselves to be grossly incompetent when it comes to managing a network and right before I migrated everyone to Verizon, Sprint was “Circling the Toilet Drain”. I have yet to be actually pleased by any wireless carrier as they all try to be more than what they really are. Verizon fought against this tooth and nail, doing everything in their power to refute being a “commodity carrier” but in the end, that’s all the customers really want. The value-added components I’m sure gratify other wireless customers and they’ve expressed their thanks to you. I do admit that it comes in handy, when it works as designed. Verizon provides the network and Apple provides the devices. It was 8/10ths the iPhone and 2/10ths the Network. I informed Sprint of this and they sent a fool to me and actually dared to argue with me about Droid. It was that meeting in which my Sprint contract died, because they sent a fool to actually pick a fight with their customer. I was paying a three-grand-a-month contract and they lost it because they sent a fool.

My attitude about mobile carriers in the United States is pretty much identical. Every company is pretty much all the same. Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The networks are different, the frequencies are different and the rest is a dart board of bullshit that the customers have to put up with in order to get work done. I’d like to say that any one company is better than their competitors, but they aren’t. Verizon has the network but the stores are chock full of slime-balls trying to sell as much accessory junk as possible. Sprint is incompetent but the stores are reliable. I don’t regard AT&T as even a mobile carrier as they are just Cingular wearing the Death Star’s face. It’s macabre and it fools nobody. Cingular was incompetent on their own and their only singular saving grace was the iPhone, as AT&T. So in the end it doesn’t really matter how much I like any one company. Sprint screwed me with a $6000 billing error and I had to go through at least four wireless field reps and even still not getting anywhere as they continuously screw up billing.

So now we’re predominantly with your company and we just have to face some rather grim realities. It’s a compromise that we make. We trade a really quite excellent network for pretty much everything else. I have yet to visit a single Verizon store here in Kalamazoo (and man, are there a lot!) where I’m not either a used-car-shopper or in one case mistakenly thrown out of a store because looking for an iPhone bumper case is something AT&T can help me with… :~|

This entire interaction with Trish’s iPhone really had to come about eventually. It exposed a situation that we were not expecting to happen. One of my clients broke her phone, this was eventually going to happen. It’s why we bought the TEP Insurance because I know my clients have butterfingers and these devices would eventually start getting damaged. I made a mistake, so did Andy M, my assistant. We wrongly assumed that if Trish walked into any Verizon store that she could lay her dearly departed phone on the counter, that the Verizon store representatives would look up her phone number, see that it was a Verizon account, and then offer to replace her iPhone. What I was really hoping for was that the Verizon rep could then help her program the Exchange information on her iPhone and she could limp along with her device until she came back to WMU to get it polished off. If there was any costs associated with this entire hypothetical event, that they would be simply posted to the account. At best I was hoping for Verizon to offer her a warranty replacement free of charge and at worst replace the phone and ding us our insurance deductible. All of this so that I could tell all my clients that they could, if out in the big wide world, spy a Verizon store and know that they were covered, because a helpful person from Verizon was in any one of the multitude of Verizon stores and that they, in a manner of speaking, had my back.

What turned out to be was not that. Trish went to a Verizon store, they erroneously noted water damage (for which I know both Apple and Verizon have it in their best interests to push as hard as possible, since water damage isn’t covered by warranties) and they indeed proved the device was shot. They told Trish that they couldn’t do anything at all. And then Trish had to bring her dead device to me. I started with MIKGOVTEAM and was told that I had to go to Asurion. What really got me was the vicious circle that the both of you created. Verizon pointing to Asurion, Asurion pointing to Verizon and I’m in the middle, with a broken phone, and no way to resolve the circle. The advice from MIKGOVTEAM was useless. Being told to “Call Asurion” when I have a page from Asurion that says “Call Verizon” is just stupid. That’s when I reached out for you and Kim, since I was obviously getting nowhere in a big hurry. The process with Asurion wasn’t pleasant either, when I got to that. I had to cover everything all over again with them, get yet another claim number, and fill out an affidavit proving I am who I say I am and then faxing it to them.

So where we stand now is we can’t really trust any Verizon store. They run the gamut from used-car-salesmen to barely verbal thugs. They “note” water damage when there really isn’t any just to weasel out of having to put up with a warranty issue and then all of this that happened. If we invalidate all the Verizon stores and all I get from MIKGOVTEAM is “Call Asurion, 888-888-8888. Talk to them.” messages, then where exactly is the customer care, because I certainly don’t see it. So… to cope with all of this I’ve told my iPhone-using coworkers to just avoid Verizon stores altogether and bring their phone issues to me directly so I can corral all our dealings with your company through my office. It’s just another compromise. I am trading all that I wanted, the idea that even if my clients are in Houston, Texas, with a dead iPhone, that they will be able to get it fixed quickly for Verizon’s nationwide network. In the end, that’s what Verizon is to me. It’s the network. What I was really after isn’t possible and really all I need to know is that is how it’s going to be. I lower my expectations to match and we’re back to being happy customers.

When my clients get to Houston, Texas and realize their phones are dead they’ll have to find a Kinko’s and ship their phones to me so I can initiate an insurance claim, wait the days for Asurion to get to whatever they have to do, get the phone back to me and then FedEx it overnight to my clients. It’s messy and inconvenient and painfully expensive, but this is what we have to do in order to compromise.

If Verizon decides to make any of this better, I’ll be first in line with a smile and ready gratitude. I will admit that the website, when it works, works well. But Steve, you have to also know that it took Verizon nearly a month before I could reliably purchase iPhones through my website portal. The first half dozen iPhones I had to order manually through Kim. I’m sure there are other things that you and your team can do for us, but how much of it will be actually needed beyond ordering new devices, dealing with damaged devices, and the assumed-it’s-coming billing fiascos? Most of which I can already do through the website, and the billing fiascos, well, those will certainly be treasured moments yet to come. I don’t expect much and really all I’m after is the network, so don’t feel bad. It’s the best we can do with this compromise.

After my numerous experiences with Verizon stores, I certainly understand why you’ve established a walled garden around us all. I certainly don’t expect Verizon to change, but it will help you to understand that what we’ve lost stings quite badly. I can hope that we’ll never have another broken iPhone to deal with, but we both know it’s just a matter of time. At least now I know not to expect anything from the stores and I can skip MIKGOVTEAM and just contact Asurion directly. The only other reason I would need to contact you would be to help resolve problems with Verizon. The only eventuality I can think of is when Verizon screws up billing, and that might never happen, so if the world works out for the best, I won’t need to contact you or your team at all. If that isn’t the definition of a happy customer, I don’t know what is.

Now all we have to wait for is the other shoe to drop and witness the three-ring-circus that is Asurion. I fully expect that they’ll screw up and send us an empty box full of shredded newspaper and a $9000 bill, 60 days late with a collection notice rubber-banded to the box. My professional expectations start out at raging incompetence and there is nowhere to go but up!