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?

Return to Sender, Address Unknown

This afternoon I was working from home, because fumes from roofing adhesive had been allowed to get into the ventilation system at work and it smelled awful, to say the least. I had been working several hours when suddenly my network connection went dead. Usually either my flaky router or the DSL is the culprit. Rebooting both didn't fix the problem and neither did rebooting my laptop. My phone even had a dial tone. Eventually, I decided to go out to dinner. That's the quick fix for any difficult situation, after all.

When we got back, my dad decided to try a direct wired connection from the router to the laptop. Then he tried connecting directly to the DSL. Nothing worked.

Finally, he suggested I try calling my cell phone number from my home phone. An automated recording said that I was being automatically redirected to Embarq. I was on hold for almost ten minutes and then the woman who answered took all my personal information. She read me my balance and said it wasn't due yet. I told her about the symptoms and she said they had put a hold on my account, because one of their mailings had been returned to them. She said that it could take up to four hours to restore my service, but thankfully it only took a few minutes, or I wouldn't have been writing this tonight.

A couple of months ago, I did get an answering machine message from an Embarq representative saying that they had received a piece of returned mail and asked me to call them back. I didn't, because I had continued to receive mail from them and my bill is drafted anyway. Why should they care as long as they get their money? It's not as if my address has changed in over three years.

So, without warning, without a follow-up call or an e-mail, they just cut off my phone service. Why don't they just sign me up for Time Warner services while I'm at it, to save me the trouble? Has Time Warner found this out and begun doctoring people's mail? If not, they might want to consider it.