Jeremy is eligible for an upgrade of his unreliable Droid X. Or maybe he isn’t. No, but today he totally is! It seems like every time he talks to someone new at Verizon, he gets a different answer.

This is a classic tale of the run around from a corporate entity, in this case Verizon wireless. It starts back in January of this year, when my droid x started to become a less than reliable phone. I went in to use my mobile insurance to get a new phone. The associate then told me if I can wait till the middle of February I would have an upgrade available, so I decided to suck it up and deal with my phone. So in February I go back to the Verizon store, only to be told basically that I have NO upgrade and they have no idea why the associate (this is at the same location) would tell me I did.

I went to 3 Verizon stores only to receive the same bad news, with each time being told that the associate was probably going to just activate a new line with a dummy phone and transfer my number to the new line leaving me with a phone lines would never use and cost me $10 more a month. Since I already pay $200 a month for service now, I took a walk on the idea of adding an extra line. I put this matter to bed because I don’t have time to play games with cell companies.

So let’s fast forward to yesterday (may 4th). I call Verizon customer service and explain the situation, the person I spoke with gives the usual apology and puts me on hold to look over my account. He comes back on the line, and says that even though Verizon terminated that annual upgrades for the main account line that I have been ‘grandfathered’ in and according to him I’m eligible for an upgrade. He begins the order process just to make sure he could give me an upgrade with 2 year contract pricing…and everything looks good.

At this point I ask if I can go to a Verizon store to get my upgrade, which he says he will add notes to my account and they should have no problems. This morning I’m off to the Verizon store to rid my self of my problem child droid phone. I arrive at the store,tell my situation to the associate, he looks my account up and says he can’t process an upgrade, let’s call customer service. We call customer service, only to be told I have to go to a corporate Verizon store and my line has NO upgrade available but I can do an alternate upgrade on the other line on my account.

So I have to go to yet another store, only to be told that the customer service rep I talked on the phone has NO idea what they are talking about. Even though they are a corporate store they can’t upgrade either line, and again they apologize that I’ve gotten wrong information.

So I have a half working phone that I’d rather not replace through insurance for the second time, and apparently no one at Verizon can tell me straight up what the deal is. Just a lot of go here and they should take care of you. It feels like on the phone they says whatever they can to make you happy and get you off the line whether or not they are right, wrong or indifferent. I just want an upgrade that 3 Verizon reps have told me I’m eligible for.

The next week, we heard back from Jeremy. Verizon approved his upgrade, but he still has no new phone. Why? He wanted to upgrade to an iPhone, and the reason why he can’t have one is a familiar refrain….it’s all Apple’s fault. An early upgrade to an iPhone just isn’t happening.

As it turns out, after a couple more phone calls to Verizon, they did agree to give me my upgrade and even went so far as to take my credit card number and process my order…BUT..since I recieved no email conformation from Verizon on my order processing let alone being shipped I called this afternoon to find out why. The rep I spoke to this afternoon informed me that that even though I recieved approvals from Verizon management to get an iPhone 4S, that Apple themselves have actually step in and denied my upgrade.

Now I know that Apple tends to keep a stranglehold on its products, but this really just seems unbelievable. All I really wanted was what several Verizon reps promised me, and then agreed to…but in the end it looks like Apple is the bad guy here.

Oh, Apple. So easy to love, so easy to demonize.

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