Very disappointed with Verizon

Question

A few days ago my phone got dropped and my screen cracked. I was out of town and called Verizon to see what my options were. I need a phone for work so i ask what can i do to get a phone right away. I was told i could go into a Verizon store and either use my upgrade or pay full retail and make payments for 24 months. Since i was out of town i asked my wife to go to the store and get a replacement for me. I said to just get the same phone.
She goes to the Verizon store near our house only to find out that she cant get the payment plan there, she has to go to a corp. store. Well there was a waste of 45 minutes while she waited in line. Then she drives another 30 minutes to the Corp store where she waits in line again for 30-45 minutes and tells them what i wanted where they spend another 15-20 minutes trying to up sell phones as she has to repeatedly tell them i want the same phone i had before, evidently they are really pushing the iPhone now. Anyway i was eligible for an upgrade but we were saving that for my wife's phone because it has been malfunctioning more and more lately. So i told my wife to use the payment plan not the upgrade that i was told was an option from the phone conversation i had with customer service.
  Anyway turns out that the payment plan also uses the upgrade AND you still pay full retail for the phone, which we were not told. I contacted costomer service to see if there was something we could do. We still have one phone that doesnt work right. I offered to resign for another 2 years on the phone that has no contract if they allowed us to upgrade my wifes phone but was turned down.
So know i have 3 choices.
  1. Keep the phone and let my wife keep using a phone that doesnt work right
    2. keep the phone but pay full price for the phone up front (which i dont have)
   3. Return the phone, Pay $250 to get out of my one line still on contract and go to sprint where i can get unlimted data and 2 free iphone 5's.  This would seem like the best deal for us but yet i like the phone i have now and up to this point had been happy with verizon.
Seems like the best deal for Verizon would be just to let us upgrade my wifes phone. The lose half the retail on the phone but gain $3000 over 2 years on our contract.
Its your move Verizon. We will be going to the sprint store on Monday night most likely and if nothing is done by then i guess see ya.

Answer 1

I am in the same situation. My daughter cracked her phone earlier this year back in February. In the mean time she has been using my old HTC Thunderbolt, which of course is old and had a lot of issues. When we heard about the Verizon Edge plan, we thought this was a great solution. So we waited until the plan was available, only to find out that we are not eligible for the Verizon Edge Plan. It would seem that the advertising is deceptive. They state upgrade at any time; they mean anytime as long as you are eligible for an upgrade which basically leaves you in the same situation, nothing is different. My daughter attempted to sign up for the edge plan and was told she had to be eligible for an upgrade. The she was told that she could get a phone and use the payment plan program which means you can purchase a phone at full price and pay over the course of a year. This of course means paying for  a $600/$700 phone over 1 year.  I asked if we could pay for half the phone up front and pay the remaining balance over the course of a year and they said no, any additional payment would be added to account payment for services. The Verizon Edge plan is a scam, it is not what it seems. There really is no flexibility at all, my daughter will have to wait tip August 2014 to purchase a new phone under this plan. I have paid verizon over $200 a month for my familiy's plan for 7 years. This is not customer friendly service; I will be changing carriers as soon as I am eligible, I will not pay so much money for this type of service. T-Mobile is starting to look much better, I hear positive things about their customer service even with their coverage. I don't travel much anyway!   ...........Unhappy Customer!