Good Customer Service Experience: Verizon Wireless

People complain about bad customer service all the time, particularly cell phone companies. Believe me, I can complain about Sprint all afternoon. This past weekend, I had a good experience with Verizon Wireless, so I think it's important to share that as well.

As I mentioned earlier, I attended Blog Carolinas on Friday. In preparation for heavy Twitter usage during the conference, I upgraded my text messaging plan to 1500 messages per month. I figured I'd be all set. I'd never tweeted much by sending text messages from my cell phone, as Twitter was originally intended to be used, primarily because of the high text messaging rates. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to give it a try and then, if I wanted to, I could go back to my 20 cents per message rate afterwards.

On Saturday, the day after the conference, I decided to check and see just how many messages I'd sent and received. I immediately saw that the indicator was red and had a warning that I'd exceeded my limit. Uh oh. That couldn't be good. I'd sent over 80 messages on Friday and received over 450. The problem was that I also have my parents' phones on my account and it turns out that I had added the 1500 text message plan to my father's phone. I don't believe that he has ever sent a text message before, on any phone.

I felt ill, but well enough to send Verizon e-mail and explain what had happened. I asked if they could retroactively add the 1500 text messaging plan to my phone and remove it from his. It said they would respond within 24 hours.

Guess what? They did what I asked, even though I was the one who made a mistake. Of course, it's their interest to help me out such that I continue using their services and continue text messaging, but it's rare to hear of a company's actually having realized that.

So far, every interaction I've had with Verizon Wireless has been positive. When I activated my phone, I even talked to someone with a sense of humor. That's pretty amazing. I can only hope that my experiences continue to be be positive, but I will still be more careful in the future.

Have any of you had any noteworthy customer-services experiences lately, good or bad?