Verizon Vent
Jim vented about "Micro-brains"; now it's my turn with Verizon.
We continue on getting ready for our summer sail, and since we will be almost totally dependent upon our cell phones for communication, both voice and email, we decided that it would be a good idea to have spare batteries for our cell phones. After all, we have already had "annual experiences" with cell phone batteries that are supposed to last at least two years. Sounds like a good idea, right?
So off we go to buy a battery for my cell phone. Now we bought this cell phone 10 months ago, so there should be no problem, right? Wrong. At the Verizon store we were sent to "Customer Dis-Service" where we were told that my model was out of production, and it might be tough to locate a battery! Less than a year old!!!!! Outdated and out of production!!!! They searched the "white book" and then the searched the "blue book" and they even tried the website! No joy. Of course, we could always buy a new phone!
So home we went and got on Verizon's website and searched a bit and called their national "Customer Dis-Service". Here we are told that, yes, they have a battery but it would cost $59.99!! I don't think the damn phone cost that much!! But they want to be helpful, and they will graciously allow me to upgrade my phone for a very discounted price, but I would have to extend our current contract by two years to qualify. Now just about four months ago we extended our contract by two years to do a discounted upgrade of Jule's phone! For all of the same reasons!!! At this rate in a couple of years we will be extended into the next century as we try to keep up with batteries and model turnover.
At this point we are smelling "scam" and hung up and smoldered for about an hour. In total disgust I drove back to the Verizon store to try to get the best deal I could on a new phone, and I will buy a spare battery for it right now, because by next week I might not be able to get one!! Well, when I describe what I am trying to do to the sales person, he says that the phone is perfectly good, lithium ion batteries should last at least two years unless you do something really dumb (?? Did we??), and he says that since the phone just went out of production, there should be some batteries around and they should be heavily discounted since it is now out of production. So he pulls out the "black book" (NOT blue, NOT white but BLACK), and, sure enough, there is a battery for $29.99 and it will be in FedEx by Tuesday. And this from the person who is supposed to convince me to buy a new phone as opposed to the "customer dis-service" people who are supposed to help with our current phone. But, after a total of about five hours spent, I have a spare battery on the way, and we are another step closer to shoving off.
Somewhere there MUST be a moral to this tale, but I sure don't know what it is.