Literally the worst customer support experience I've ever had to deal with -- Why don't they let their customers speak to supervisors on demand?

Question

Call 1: I spoke to them to see if I was eligible for an upgrade. It turned out they had accidentally counted a temporary phone switch to an old device as an upgrade. The representative was extremely slow minded and took over an hour to read through my notes and process what I was saying happened, consulting with his supervisor multiple times. He claimed to have noted everything and told me I had to go to a verizon store to verify in person that I was still using my original phone, and that then I would be able to get an upgrade immediately.
Trip to the store: Drove an hour only to be told by the store rep that there were NO NOTES on my account about the issue and there was nothing he could do to help me and that I'd have to call customer support again. The store was closing in 20 mins and customer support seems to take 45 minutes minimum to resolve anything, so I left.
Call 2: Asked a woman to speak to a supervisor about the guy who wasted 2+ hours of my life and gas money. She put me on hold for a long time, came back and said they were all busy right now, would I like to leave my complaint with her? I said no thank you, I will keep waiting. She said ok, and proceeded to hang up.
Call 3: Asked a different woman to speak to a supervisor, she put me on hold for a long time and then told me that since I wasn't an authorized user I could not speak to one... lol ok. Had a family member call and authorize me.
Call 4: Asked a guy to speak to a manager. He insisted on taking the complaint himself. Why would I trust someone to take a complaint about their colleague possibly sitting a few desks away when many of them have proven to be incredibly incompetent already? It sounded like we were making progress... then he hung up too.
Call 5: Asked yet another woman to speak to the manager. She demanded a reason, I told her it was to make a complaint and she told me about a dozen times that the managers would just tell her to take the complaint. I insisted, she refused... finally I threatened to close all of our accounts unless she let me speak to a manager. She said they couldn't right now since the office was closing soon, but that one would call me within 24-48 hours. I'd bet my life savings that never happens. At that point I tried to talk to her about the original upgrade issue, and she said her system had suddenly crashed and that I'd have to call back the next day...  Seriously???
Absolutely unreal how horrible their customer support is. Will be switching to T-Mobile immediately.

Answer 1

Having worked in customer service, I have some experience with this kind of situation.  Reps are typically trained to make all attempts to handle complaints by themselves, because there are obviously many more reps than supervisors.  They're usually REQUIRED to fully authorize the account and to get the whole situation from the customer prior to referring you to a supervisor.  One of the biggest problems is that many customers think that demanding a supervisor is a way to guarantee you will get what you want.  If the reason for your request to escalate isn't a valid one, the supervisor won't give in to you either.
There are plenty of times in my own experience, especially as a brand new rep out of training, that I took a long time to research and get an understanding of the issue.  Yes, I wasn't moving at light speed, but that doesn't make me an idiot.  It means I was trying to gather as much info s possible to try and deal with the issue. But I had plenty of customers tell me I was stupid and to transfer them to my supervisor, simply because I took longer than their patience could tolerate to get all the details I needed.
I have never had a job that I executed flawlessly day in and day out.  Maybe you have and that's why you can't tolerate a person taking a little longer to wrap their head around the issue, but I'd rather doubt it.
I also don't think you will find reps who work at light speed and utilize a magic wand to fix people's issues at T-Mobile, either, but I guess it never hurts to try.
Just to clarify: I do not work for Verizon and never have.  I worked for a residential phone and internet company.