My daughter and I have had been eligible for our phones to be upgraded for over a year. It has been so long that I actually paid off both phones within our Verizon plan. My daughter always wants a new phone but somehow I got her to keep her phone for 3 years now. She’s 21, that’s a big deal!!! So the iPhone 12 is out and it has received a lot of attention and I still got her to leave it alone. I personally didn’t care either way.

So at the end of the year, Verizon had a deal on the iPhones. If you trade in an old phone and purchase a new phone you get a credit spread out over the 24 months your paying for the new phone. Basically it was going to cost us like $8 a month each line to upgrade to the iPhone 12. I decided to get the phones.

Normally I would do this in a Verizon store but this time I was doing it online. Not only online but through Verizon chat. I’ve been with Verizon wireless for about 25 years. So long they were a kiosk in the middle of the mall. I understand how promotions work. I knew, they needed to get the old phones in and process before I would see the credit on the bill. I got the new phone but never the box to send in the old phones. This is where the problem started.

I first attempted to solve this through Verizon chat once again. The told me there was no claim for the phone to be returned and sent me a link. Well my old phone wasn’t available for the trade in anymore. I knew this was going to be a mess. When chat wasn’t getting me anywhere I made the call to customer service.

Two hours twenty six minutes and thirty four seconds. That’s how long I had to be on the phone with customer service trying to fix what they did wrong when I purchased through the chat. My Verizon plan wasn’t eligible for the promotion so that had to be switch. The trade in was supposed to be set up first before the phone purchase was made. That was done incorrectly. I now had to set up my trade in for a much lower amount that Verizon is supposed to manually fix when they receive my old phones. I’m sure that too will take another 2 hour phone call.

I was so upset. If I returned the phone the phones I wouldn’t have been eligible for the promotion anymore. I was able to get a text verifying, in a very short phase, what happened. That is my only proof that I am supposed to get the promotion over the 24 months. I’m exhausted just telling the tale again. You can’t make this up.