How can I shame Verizon publicly?

Corporations are not capable of experiencing shame.

I once posted an entire tech support chat I had with an off-shore phone company rep in my blog.

You could send it here.

They might post it.

I wanna see!

Here, Verizon Forum, or any real public forum for the matter. Post it everywhere you want/can. Hell, see if the news paper will print the story.

Its just like normal speech. Say something once in a loud enough manner, everyone will know. But the same will happen if you tell in a few times, in different places, with a softer voice.

Here it is (it’s pretty funny, though aggravating)

Please wait for a Verizon Wireless sales representative to assist you with your order. Thank you for your patience!
A Verizon Wireless online pre-sales specialist has joined the chat. You are now chatting with Chiquita
Chiquita: Hello. Thank you for visiting our chat service. May I help you with your order today?
You: Hi
Chiquita: Hello. How may I assist you?
You: I’m eligible for an upgrade, I’ve chosen the phone, I’ve gotten to Checkout but it will not
You: accept my mailing address. That’s because there is no mail delivery in my town,
Chiquita: Did you see any abbreviation
You: only PO boxes, and my street address is not in the database you use
You: to verify addresses.
You: It’s not an abbreviation problem. It is that I am not in your address database.
You: I need someone to override it. It’s a valid address, I get packages here all the time.
Chiquita: Unfortunately it is brcausre you will notp b e able to get the En3.
You: What? I’m sorry I didn’t understand that.
Chiquita: i sent the wrong message. I am sorry.
You: ??
Chiquita: That is no problem.
You: What do we do?
Chiquita: Where are you?
You: At home.
Chiquita: Click on the add to cart button.
You: Oh I misunderstood you. I am on the Customer Information Page trying to get it to accept my shipping address.
You: It’s already in the cart, plans have been chosen, I’m just trying to add my address.
Chiquita: Did you use any abbreviations?
You: I get this: We cannot verify the shipping address you entered. Please correct your shipping address and select

the ‘Continue’ button below.
You: No I explained the problem to you already, twice.
Chiquita: Send me the address your trying to enter?
You: I need an override.
You: 5 Ark Street Number 2
You: Philont, NY 12565
You: Philmont, sorry.
Chiquita: What does the ARK stand for?
You: Ark Street is the name of my street. It stands for Ark, like Noah’s Ark.
Chiquita: The reason it is not taking your address. Is because Fed Ex does not deliver to P.O. Boxes.
You: Are you having trouble following me? I told you what the problem is. Could you please get a supervisor?
You: Fed Ex delivers to 5 Ark Street Number 2 all the time. It is not a PO Box, it is my home.
Chiquita: Do you live in an apartment?
You: It’s a two-family home. There are two units. I live in number 2.
You: Sometimes they call it “Right Front”
You: It has a “2” on the door.
Chiquita: Then you are going to need to put the apartment 2 on the second line.
You: I tried that.
Chiquita: Please hold on while I check that information.
You: Please, please get a supervisor. You really do not seem to understand the problem.
Chiquita: I understand I am try to see why it is not accepting your address. Because you are not using any

abbreviations. I am sorry for the confusion.
You: My address is unverifiable through the database that FedEx uses. That’s because they use the USPS database for

verification, and my house does not exist in there, because there is no mail delivery in this town We have to go

pick up our mail.
You: That is the problem. You won’t ship to my approved address because it is a PO Box.
You: You can’t find my real address because the Post Office
You: Doesn’t use it.
You: You have to override the verification system.
You: It happens to me all the time. Just override it, and I’ll get the package.
Chiquita: Unfortunately I do not have access to override the system. You are going to have to enter another address

to receive the phone. I am sorry about that.
You: If you don’t understand, or you can’t do it, please, please, please get someone else.
You: I have no other address. i live in my house. I don’tg live in someone else’s house.
You: This is getting to be a crazy coversation. Can’t you get a supervisor? You are being so stubborn.
Chiquita: You would be able to have it shipped to your job.
You: I do not have a job. I have one address. Please get me someone who can help me, I beg you, please.
Chiquita: We can have it shipped to the close Verizon store.
You: You can have it shipped to my house. Just tell FedEx that’s the address. They deliver here twice a month at

least. I just got a FedEx package from Dell yesterday. Why won’t you escalate this to someone who can help?
You: Do you need my to send a transcrption of this conversation to your head office?
You: me
You: You’re not alone, there, right? You have a boss? Where is your boss?
Chiquita: Could you please hold while I get me boss.
You: Finally.
Chiquita: He is going to log in and it will be a few minutes.
You: Great
Chiquita: Your Welcome.
You: Will he be able to read this?
Chiquita: Yes he will be able to read the information.
You: Great.
Chiquita: Your Welcome.
Marques: Good afternoon. My name is Marques. I see you are having some issues with the shipping. How may I be of

assistance?
You: ???
You: Can you please read this insane conversation from the top?
You: Then explain it to me.
Marques: I have reviewed the chat.
You: Can you explain it to me?
Marques: We use the United States Postal Service database to verify shipping addresses. If the address you have

entered does not work, this means it is not registered with the USPS.
Marques: Fed-Ex makes our deliveries based on this information.
You: I know that. I told your employee that 3 times while she was telling me it was an abbreviation problem.
You: This is not news. Now, how do we solve this?
Marques: We will need a valid physical shipping address to complete the online order. Do you have one available?
You: I gave you a valid physical shipping address that FedEx uses all the time. They delivered a box here yesterday

from Dell Computers.
You: I kn ow the route-man. He is a nice blond German man.
You: This is a Verizon problem, not a FedEx problem.
Marques: Alright. I will check the address you have provided against the USPS database. Please hold one moment.
You: You will not find it. We do not receive mail from the USPS. We have to go to our PO Box to pick it up.
You: The address is not in the dxatabase. It is, however valid. It’s a house. I live in it. It has doors and windows and a front porch.

You might want to remove your address from the conversation.

Apparantly it won’t matter.

it will when i order all sorts of random kinky sex paraphernalia for you ^.^

lol jk

but yeah, just post it man.

Dude remove the address, if this gets on 4chan you’re fucked…

Too late. But 4chan has its amusements.

“It stands for Ark, as in Noah’s Ark.” Nice. :-)

@pdworkin….It’s your fault….if you didn’t live on a gosh darn ark there would be no problem. Try docking!
‘See ya….Gary/wtf

Can’t they just ship it to your PO Box? Crazy that you had to ask for a supervisor that many times, how annoying.

Good luck on getting your new phone. Sorry I don’t know of any places you can have this posted =/

By posting about them on Fluther.

@pdworkin That must have been so horribly frustrating for you, but I couldn’t stop laughing.

You could post that on Ripoff Report or a similar site.

I thought it was funny, too, even while it was aggravating me. It was like Franz Kafka trying to upgrade a phone. During the “chat” I had the submission page open in another tab, I tried over and over again, and finally, for some unknown reason it accepted my submission and they are sending me a phone. That’s why I ended the chat.

This scares me because I’m an Alltel customer and October 17th will become a Verizon customer because Alltel got bought out. Alltel has excellent customer service…these people appear to be quite, how do you say it nicely?...dumb?

You shouldn’t feel special or picked on either one. I just had a similar conversation with several someones working for AT&T because the screen on my daughter’s very expensive Blackberry quit working.

At least everyone had some sort of American accent, though. The last time I had to deal with Dell I ended up with someone who said his name was “Peter” but it turned out it was really Pankaj, and he was from Bombay, was married but still lived with his mother. I didn’t get my computer problem resolved, but I did get a recipe for sweet raita.

LOL @Darwin. I have also had lovely conversations with Dell Support Techs about Classical Hindu music, and the fate of the Dalit caste, without getting my computer fixed.

And actually at first I thought maybe you should just go moon them or something. However, I doubt even that would do much. Verizon has no shame.

Can you hear me now?

You could try selling the transcripts on eBay. If people will pay for little jars of “celebrity breath” and buy ghosts on eBay, you might actually be able to get some compensation our of all this frustration!

I also have a physical address for FedEx and UPS and a post office box for all normal mail.

When I ordered the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade, it had to be sent FedEx and I had to be home to sign for it.

I have named my driveway due to new 911 issues, and the name is not yet on any data base. Luckily the FedEx guy knows me. He was outraged because he had to drop off 50 or so Snow Leopards in our hill country.They could easily have been mailed.

But he did chat about the bobcat he had just seen, and I gave him some vinca minor for his wife’s garden.

@gailcalled What is a Snow Leopard upgrade? Just curious…

Does vinca minor mean periwinkle? (Am I getting off-thread here?)

@knitfroggy: Oh, my poor froggy. It is the beautiful, albeit minor upgrade ofMac’s Loeopard OS to Snow Leopard (10.6). It was upgraded to 10.6.1 before I even installed it.

Mac OS X v10.0 (Cheetah)
Mac OS X v10.1 (Puma)
Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar)
Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther)
Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger)
Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard)
Mac OS X v10.6 (Snow Leopard)

@pdworkin…Yeah, it is the ground cover aka myrtle. It grows rampantly all over this area.

@gailcalled Dude i cant wait for 1.7 (Lion).... wait what? were already at 11.1?

this is why those mac commercials make me laugh. “I want a computer without viruses”, ok, dont get the internet….
“I want an OS that just works” XD So youre getting a MAC because???

@gailcalled I’m a PC person…the only thing I know about Mac’s are that they have really funny commercials! :)

@knitfroggy: Once before you die, try a Mac. It is akin to having a fling with the gorgeous guy who cleans the pool.

@kibaxcheza : Sorry. I don’t follow what you are saying. And I assume that any innovative Mac OS upgrade will be, perforce, called Milo.

@gailcalled That’s ok…I don’t have a pool… :)

@knitfroggy: Owning a Mac is better ((I am guessing here, in case you are wondering)

@gailcalled Guess it’s just what you are used to. My brother in law is a photographer and they have several Mac’s in their studio and at home. I have used them and just can’t get used to it

Oh, I am so excited! Look what I just got in the mail!

The Consumerist
to me

show details 9:57 PM (56 minutes ago)

Thanks for the tip. It makes my head spin a bit!

LAURA
ASSISTANT EDITOR
THE CONSUMERIST
CONSUMERIST.COM
tips@consumerist.com

If I have any problems, I go to the store. Sales people will 1) want the sale, and 2) don’t want other customers to listen to you have problems, so they should do their best to get it taken care of, theoretically.

Insane is right. I have had so many problems with verizon too, I’m so sick of them. Once they hit me with a 330 dollar bill, claiming I sent almost a thousand picture messages. They printed up a sheet of when all these messages were “sent” – the majority being in the middle of the night, or hours/dates that I was at work. Thumbs UP Verizon!

@gailcalled – My father had a PC and a Mac running in the same office. I could easily slip from one to the other with no problems, so I no longer see much of a difference between the two OSs. I also rarely have much trouble with my PC, possibly because I run decent anti-virus software which costs much less than the difference in price between a PC and a Mac.

The only problem I ran into was that I couldn’t open some internet sites (like Askville) with the Mac’s in-built internet browser so I had to down load Firefox for Mac. I haven’t had that problem with a PC (although I use Firefox instead of IE) and I haven’t even had problems with Vista.

I am afraid that as far as I can see the major differences these days between PCs and Macs is cost and physical beauty.

Personally, I avoid Verizon like the plague and I loved Cingular, but then AT&T gobbled them up.