Verizon

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!

Horses and Turkeys

I’ve often times written about the turkeys in my life. These flightless, technically useless feed-birds also have another connotation. A turkey can also be a lame workplace drag. A human doorstop. Bright as a bag of hammers. Smart as a sack of bricks. These people are witnessed by the statement “Oh God, really? Again!? Wow.”

I have evidence now of turkey-dom in my midst. A lot of my initial irritation is tempered for many of them because at some point in the past they demonstrated some measure that they respected us and our mission within the overarching structure of our organization. The context is one of the horse. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.

There is a difference between the way I used to respond to turkeys and how I do now. I’m not just drifting in space without a radio. I’ve got a tether and someone in ground control who gives a damn. So, the turkeys are being rounded up and sent to the nearest metaphorical Tyson packing plant. I’ve got direction, and I categorically refuse to let these particular dullards get me down. Their lives will suck, I’m quite tired of trying to haul them out of the water. They’ve chosen ignorance and we can’t be really bothered with that sort any more. It boggles my mind, the way some of these people behave.

C’est la vie…

Say Goodbye Gracie

Got this little marvel in the mail:

Employees using University owned cell phone/PDAs will be taxed on the fair market value, (in this case the cost to WMU), of the phone and plan.  All applicable payroll taxes will be applied.  For phones and devices already in use, we will tax the value of the plan only.  In order to properly account for University monies used to pay for dual use cell phones and ensure the fringe benefits are taxed properly, the voucher given to accounts payable to pay for such phone service must include or have attached a detail of the names and employee numbers of the employees and the respective amounts being paid for their phone/device.  For plans where the cost isn’t already broken down by phone, you will need to allocate the total cost to the phones if you are not already doing so for general ledger posting purposes.  Accounts payable will submit the cost information to the payroll department after they review to make sure all the cost is being accounted for.    Departments that are paying for University owned cell phones with a procurement card should submit the same information to the payroll department on a monthly basis.  No department should be paying for a non-University owned cell phone plan with a procurement card.

So on February 1st I will be surrendering my line at 269-599-7798. This will conclude my mobile telephony reach as well. I will most likely not be having any other phone as I cannot afford one. As a practical upshot to this, after February 1st I will be unavailable to telephone traffic for quite some time. There won’t be a replacement number as I don’t have the funds available to afford to replace such technology. If I am not at my office, I won’t be reachable. In the case of emergencies, they will have to be queued and held for me until I reach a place where I can access telephony equipment. Likewise, if I have an emergency I will be unable to call 911. Lets hope we don’t run into any of that sort of thing. This is 21st Century progress at it’s finest, folks. Let us rejoice.

As for our business mobile infrastructure?

Say Goodbye Gracie.

Picky picky

What arrived in campus mail today was a marvelous surprise. It was my reimbursement request, sent back to me by the central bureaucracy that not only was my request rejected because it lacked a business purpose but also that my reimbursement would not include the sales tax that I paid. =Insert rude gesture here= 🙂

Really, the sales tax comes down to $2.22 but like many things, it isn’t about the money as so much as it’s about the principles behind it. I can’t buy iTunes Cards or iPad Apps directly with my University Procurement Card, so I’m stuck, so the only way to move forward is to fund it privately and request reimbursement. This was something I was fine with, it helps everyone get along and business can continue without interruption. That was, until I discovered that getting said reimbursement is an uphill battle and that I won’t get a fair shake because there is a policy that people can hide behind when convenient.

So, knowing the rules of the ‘game’ now, between me and my employer, I elect to withdraw my initial “helping out” because it is plainly not equitable. I pay money on behalf of this institution and I don’t get a fair and proper reimbursement. I don’t blame this place for the failure, I blame myself. I was dumb enough to volunteer my resources to further the efforts of this institution and that was a mistake. So, a few moments ago I logged into my work-based iTunes account and removed the reference to my credit card. Since there are no funds attached to the account and no credit card, future App purchases are effectively dead until WMU decides on how it’s going to proceed on its own.

And that’s kind of the core of this blog post. How can an institution like this cope with the 21st Century. At first it was just a quaint little nothing, a bird on a radar screen – the iTunes App Store. Ever since Apple pursued this strategy further with OS X 10.6.6 and introducing the App Store to the Desktop, now we have something. Plus these devices are not simply going to go away. iPads are not a fad that is going to just fade away like Bell Bottoms, they’re here to stay and finding ways to integrate them into our “enterprise” existence has led us all to a knotwork of difficulty. The professional instrumentation that exists lacks elegance, to put it mildly.

It’s not my job any more to fret and wring my hands and get all bent out of shape that this place screwed me once again. I’m not angry. I see it as an education. Now I know through a real object lesson what happens when I do something like this, and what have I learned? I’m never going to do this, or anything else like this, ever again. Once bitten, twice shy mostly. My biggest fault is electing to forget about all the times when this place has failed me or let me down or in this case, lead to a wee bit of financial loss. In a way it’s good that I suffered financial harm during this entire endeavor, perhaps that will be enough to keep the memory alive so when I face something like this in the future I can fail to offer anything beyond what is strictly a business option. Reimbursements? Nah, never again, thanks.

Now I await with bated breath to see how this institution copes.

Moving to Verizon iPhone

So I have done it. I have sent an email to my Verizon representative, Mr. Steven Miller with a letter expressing extreme interest in transferring our mobile infrastructure away from Sprint and towards Verizon on the iPhone device. We’re going to move 5 connection cards and 17 phone lines from Sprint to Verizon.

Now I wait with bated breath for the quote! Light I’m on pins and needles! To be free of this abominable Blackberry, I hardly know what to do with myself!

Kicking The Can

Sprint is utterly adorable. So far there have been two notable problems we’ve had, the first was trying to get a new line established for a new staff member in the office. They gave us a number with the exchange 363, which fails local dialing because the other POTS companies don’t understand that 363 is in the 269 area code. Sprint’s solution wasn’t “We’ll fix it” but “You should call the other POTS companies and request it be fixed.” Oh, really now? The second problem we had been crappy service in Kalamazoo Township. Instead of owning the problem, they simply just gave me the 1-800 number to essentially DIY. If I had 3 lines and ran a dumpy mom-n-pop shop out of Climax Michigan I’d be fine with it, but I’ve got damn near 25 lines and I spend two grand a month – I would appreciate some TLC god damn it. So here is an email I wrote to Sprint…

Thanks for the information.

This is the second time that Sprint has kicked the can as it were, the first time was Sprint’s determination that their customers were the proper party to resolve local carrier exchange switching errors and now with poor signal quality, as well. On some level I could be upset that Sprint has refused to take ownership of problems related to their network and problems brought to them by their customers but I am really not that invested in haranguing either of you about this. The first time is a mistake, the second time is by design. I have made a personal resolution to reduce the amount of stress and trim my rage for my own personal health and wellbeing. We are learning quickly that Sprint isn’t really invested in the whole ‘taking ownership of problems’ practice and because of these failures we are awaiting the announcement of an Apple iPhone 4-CDMA class device to be brought to Verizon and when that device is announced and manufactured I am going to recommend that we take our business to Verizon.  I don’t expect any better customer support from Verizon, but at least I won’t be filled with fantasies of skeet-shooting my mobile device any longer and feeling little blossoms of cluster headaches whenever I reset my device and get mocked by “SprintSpeed”.

As for the twin problems, the first one being the 363 local exchange switching error, we’ve avoided that by swapping numbers with a line number we already had possession of in the 599 exchange, solving that problem by sheer abandonment. As for the second problem, conditions may have improved for my user who was having problems, and if they come up again I will not bother either of you but take the issue to BWTS directly.

Thanks

So all we have to do now is wait. Wait for Verizon and Apple to ink those contracts, make sure Qualcomm has enough Viagra to go the distance, and hope that Foxconn doesn’t endure anymore “It’s Raining Men (and Women)” 🙂