I’ve been on AT&T for quite some time.  I was an AT&T subscriber back in the dark pre-iPhone ages.  And back then, AT&T was good enough for my needs, which consisted of their most basic plan.  And then the iPhone came out, and AT&T was the only provider, and I bought it on launch day.  I kept that original launch-day iPhone even though I ran into issue after issue with AT&T’s service.  AT&T is notorious for having bad coverage in the Bay Area, and that’s certainly been true for me.  The iPhone 4 came out with its retina display, and I bought it on its launch day too, when AT&T was still the only provider.

Then Verizon and Sprint began offering the iPhone.  And then my contract with AT&T expired.  And then the iPhone 5 was announced.  Sprint’s coverage isn’t sufficient for my needs, but Verizon … oh, I dreamed of being satisfied with my carrier.  So my husband and I discussed it, and decided to preorder the new iPhone and jump to Verizon in the process.

We stayed up Thursday night to preorder.  The next day, I got an email saying that my credit application was on hold.  This surprised me, because my credit rating is stellar.  I called on Saturday, and was requested to fax in more information.  I asked if they could accept it via email, because that way I could send it in instantly, as opposed to having to find someone from 1984 who still had a fax machine.  They gave me an email address, I sent it in, and didn’t get a response.

So on Monday, I called again, and was told that they needed more information.  I got the needed information, emailed it in again, waited for a couple of hours, and called again when I didn’t get a response.  This time, I was told that I had only faxed blank pages.  I obviously hadn’t, since I had emailed PDFs.  The guy said that he didn’t know anything about emailing, only faxing, and his system was telling him that I had only faxed blank pages.  I wasn’t sure what to believe, since the earlier call had told me that they had received the previously-requested information but that they needed more, and thus his response directly contradicted my previous calls.  He said he couldn’t tell me anything more, and that I needed to fax in the requested information, and that I should have an email within 10 minutes of doing so.  I pointed out that I’d never gotten an email response to my previous “faxes”, and asked when these email responses arrive.  He said that it’s 10 minutes, and I pointed out that I hadn’t received anything yet, and he didn’t have any control over it — which, on one hand, I get it, but it’s frustrating to be given an answer that has no resemblance to reality.

So I emailed all of the requested information again.  And this time, while waiting the 10 minutes that I was told that it would take for my application to be processed once they received the information yet again, I tweeted about it:

Dear @VZWSupport: You’re making it Very Difficult for me to switch to you.I’ve been trying since Saturday. Do you want me to stay with AT&T?

And they responded!

@nadyne We certainly want you to join the VZW family! Please follow us and DM me your credit reference number & or application number. ^TB

So I did.  Concurrently, I tweeted to a friend (whose tweets are protected, so I won’t quote them, but I think that the tweet is clear enough without the context of their tweet):

well, I think I’m switching, that is. I might end up staying with AT&T if Verizon can’t get their act together.

So a different Verizon agent responded:

@nadyne Our act is all together! What is going on? I want to ensure you have a positive experience! ^AE

This tweet doesn’t actually make me feel like their act is all together, given that my DM with my application number had been sent ~5m earlier, and someone else has already responded.  But yet another agent responded via DM to say that the application had been approved (finally!), and that I should call sales to complete the order.  They gave me a toll-free number, which is a different toll-free number than the one that had been in the email that started this whole mess.  I called, and waited on hold for nearly 30m.  When an agent finally picked up, they told me that they couldn’t help me, because I was calling about an internet order instead of a phone order.  But he offered to transfer me to the right department.  I pointed out that I’d been on hold forever, and he apologized and said that he couldn’t help, but he could transfer me.  So he did.  And the department that he transferred me to is closed for the evening, since apparently West Coast customers don’t need to talk to this department.

Now I’m really feeling like Verizon’s act isn’t all together.  Their online support agents gave me the wrong number to call, and their system is so siloed that I have to know what department to call based on how I placed the original order.

I called the original number that I had, from the email.  This agent is able to confirm that yes, my credit application has been accepted.  So I asked whether this delay in approving my order is going to result in a delay in actually getting the phone.  After all, I stayed up until midnight on Thursday so that I could pre-order a spiffy new Verizon iPhone.  And he said that he didn’t have access to that information, and that I would have to call the internet order department to ask that question.  I asked if he knew the hours of that department, and he said that he didn’t.  So I got the phone number, and discovered that this department is the same one that I had gotten forwarded to earlier in this odyssey, so they’re still closed.

None of this makes me feel confident that Verizon has its act together.  As I tweeted,

This really isn’t a very good start to a relationship.

I especially like that I’m going to have to pay a $35 activation fee per line for the privilege of burning 4 hours tonight, and who knows how long tomorrow, in trying to figure out how to resolve the issue that Verizon created for me.  I have to admit that, even though AT&T’s coverage sucks and I get dropped calls and no service all the time, I’m now contemplating canceling my Verizon order.  I can just go queue up on Friday morning for a new AT&T iPhone.