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| - I needed a new cell phone, and I was tired of dealing with all the headaches buying phones and plans from websites. So I knew that even though it might cost a bit more, it was time to visit a local storefront and, when I had questions, there would be a live person available to answer them.
My mistake! The live people who staff this place seem to be dead from the neck up. I told a clerk named Stacy I needed a phone. She was happy to push a "smart phone" with an expensive contract plan. When I said I wanted a "dumb phone" with no contract, her face literally dropped. Then she disappeared for 20 minutes under guise of finding me a phone in the back that could use their prepaid plan.
When she finally came back, I began asking my annoying questions, the kind that customers insist upon asking because they don't work with the product full-time. No problem for Stacy, though. She ignored every one of my questions and did whatever she could to finish with me ASAP.
I asked a total of four times how to operate the voice mail, and all four times they decided I said something else and informed me, "This phone doesn't get e-mail."
I still wound up buying the phone and a prepaid plan since I had no phone at the time. I came back later in the week to ask my questions to someone else (forget his name). But all he could do was get irritated with me because I kept asking questions about the flip phone I'd bought, and he told me, repeatedly, "I don't use the flip phone!"
I'm not condemning Verizon Wireless--my service, as well as the online customer service, has been acceptable thus far. But the clerks and management at this particular store exhibit no interest in their customers (at least not the ones who aren't there to pay top dollar for everything) and no knowledge of any phones other than the ones they themselves use. To me, this attitude indicates that they simply have no interest in remaining employed. And this was the opinion I expressed to the corporate customer service manager when I spoke to her.
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