I bought a Vzn iPad 3 on release at Best Buy. They said we'll help you activate. I said great. Less work for me. I was assuming they were going to help me activate on prepaid since I said I wanted the option to switch back and forth between 1 and 2 GB's. Well found after after the fact, they did post paid. Reason is so the store can get a kick back from the activation fee. Let me tell you as soon as I found out I was charged the $35 fee, I had Vzn to credit that.
Now here is the kicker. I wanted to switch to prepaid after first month. Found out I need a new sim card. Customer service told me to go into a store and get one. After two days of customer sevice phone calls/store visits and hours of my time, Vzn failed to give me one. Why? Because they can't activate it so they can't give me a sim card. That is the worst customer service ever. Vzn support on twitter saw my tweets trashing Big Red. The understood that I was frustrated. They actually recommended I go to Apple to get a new sim card. I took their advice. Booked a genius bar appointment and 5 minutes later, I walked out with a new sim card and activated on prepaid. It's sad that Apple could easily help me but the carrier Big Red couldn't.
I had been thinking of switching to Verizon when LTE iPhones hit the market. This left a complete foul taste in my mouth. After this iPad, I will never buy a product that requires me to pay Vzn money. Good LTE coverage, but not worth the headaches and crappy customer service.
I could have posted this in the Verizon forum but new potential iPad users will read this forum much more. If this post saves 1 person on picking the right type of account and all of my headaches, it was well worth writing this.
Rant done
Now here is the kicker. I wanted to switch to prepaid after first month. Found out I need a new sim card. Customer service told me to go into a store and get one. After two days of customer sevice phone calls/store visits and hours of my time, Vzn failed to give me one. Why? Because they can't activate it so they can't give me a sim card. That is the worst customer service ever. Vzn support on twitter saw my tweets trashing Big Red. The understood that I was frustrated. They actually recommended I go to Apple to get a new sim card. I took their advice. Booked a genius bar appointment and 5 minutes later, I walked out with a new sim card and activated on prepaid. It's sad that Apple could easily help me but the carrier Big Red couldn't.
I had been thinking of switching to Verizon when LTE iPhones hit the market. This left a complete foul taste in my mouth. After this iPad, I will never buy a product that requires me to pay Vzn money. Good LTE coverage, but not worth the headaches and crappy customer service.
I could have posted this in the Verizon forum but new potential iPad users will read this forum much more. If this post saves 1 person on picking the right type of account and all of my headaches, it was well worth writing this.
Rant done