{"id":52,"date":"2004-05-16T13:34:03","date_gmt":"2004-05-16T20:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=52"},"modified":"2012-11-16T10:51:04","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T18:51:04","slug":"verizon-witless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/archives\/2004\/05\/16\/verizon-witless\/","title":{"rendered":"Verizon Witless"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I got a new cell phone and switched from Verizon Wireless to Sprint.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t remember when I purchased my old phone or what the terms of my service agreement were, so I went to Verizon&#8217;s website to look up my account information first.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n\tCurrent calling plan:<br \/>\n\tAmerica&#8217;s Choice 300 General .00 Long Distance $35.00 1y 0502\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I interpreted this information to mean that I had a one-year commitment starting in May 2002.  I assumed I was free and clear, so I switched carriers.<\/p>\n<p>I then got slapped with a $175 early termination fee.<\/p>\n<p>I called Verizon.  It turns out that I had a two-year commitment and that the &#8220;1y&#8221; is an internal code not meant to be decipherable by users.  To add insult to injury, I missed my end date by only two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>There are a couple of things wrong here:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"expanded\">\n<li>Verizon&#8217;s website provides no clear information about what the contract duration is.<\/li>\n<li>Verizon&#8217;s website provides external access to internal information.  <strong>If something is for internal use only, keep it internal.<\/strong>  Otherwise people will assume that information is supposed to be relevant to them and is meant to be decipherable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Had Verizon not generously provided useless but misleading information, I would have called them to find out my service agreement details.  At best, Verizon is totally clueless and is too lazy to make their website usable.  At worst, Verizon&#8217;s committing fraud. &#8220;1y&#8221; is readable enough to be misinterpreted but vague enough for Verizon to avoid accountability and to claim that they didn&#8217;t lie outright.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it&#8217;s not in Verizon&#8217;s best interests to let people know when their agreements expire, so what do I really expect?<\/p>\n<p>One of the main reasons I switched away from Verizon at all was because I was throwing money away; each month I paid $35 for less than 10 minutes of actual usage.  Sigh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I got a new cell phone and switched from Verizon Wireless to Sprint. I didn&#8217;t remember when I purchased my old phone or what the terms of my service agreement were, so I went to Verizon&#8217;s website to look up my account information first. Current calling plan: America&#8217;s Choice 300 General [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-rantsraves","tag-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}