After running the numbers and looking at likely use scenarios over the upcoming year or two, we finally decided to switch our cell phone service from US Cellular, our provider of the past seven years, to Verizon. Their plans are fairly similar, but when it came down to it, the employer discount that Verizon offers was enough to sway the balance in their direction.

So last night Becky and I had a couple hours while the girls were at a friend’s house, and we headed to the local Verizon establishment to get things set up. We had researched phones already, so it was just a matter of getting the phones and setting up the service. Some observations:

Good things:

Welcome/Service: Verizon gave a very good first impression. The manager greeted us as we entered the store, asked a few questions to find out how he could help, then took our names, double-checked that our existing phone numbers were portable (they are), and answered a couple questions while waiting for a member of the sales staff to get free. Well done, sir.

Ease of signup: We made this pretty easy because I already knew exactly what plan I wanted. I told the sales guy that we wanted that plan and those phones, and he pretty much took care of the rest. He was able to scan the bar code on my Iowa driver’s license to get all that pertinent info (no possibility of transcription errors!); the only thing I had to give him was my SSN and my email addresses (work email to qualify for the employee discount, home email for account correspondence).

Not-so-good things:

Phone availability: Our salesman went to the back to grab the phones we wanted and seemed to take a while. Finally he came back empty-handed and asked his co-worker if they were, in fact, out of the Nokia phones that we were looking for. His co-worker’s response: “I haven’t seen any of those in a long time.” Not an exceptionally heartening reply. However, Verizon will Fedex us the phones for free and we can activate them once they are delivered. While this didn’t allay the disappointment of not being able to walk out with a new phone, it’s at least a reasonable solution, and we’re getting good phones at a good price.

Communication: A couple of things here. First off, while it was clear I was getting some sort of employee discount on the service, it wasn’t clear that I was getting a similar discount on the phones. The phones that we were getting were listed on the placard as $80 with a $50 mail-in rebate. However, when they were rung up for sale, I was only charged $20 each; no rebate necessary. While I’m not complaining about the lower price, had I known that I was receiving a 30% discount on the phones themselves, I would likely have considered buying a slightly more expensive phone. But I’m happy with the one I’m getting, so that’s mostly their loss of a sale.

Second thing: I never once saw a piece of paper with the cell contract, details, or my contact information on it. I found this to be a bit odd. In past signups with US Cellular, I had to sign multiple copies of a contract, verify that all my information was correct, etc. This time: nothing. Now I know there’s a 30-day money-back period where I can go change things if they really messed something up, it would’ve been more comforting had I at least been given a one-page printout summarizing my purchase; something for me to verify that they got my name and email in the system correctly, that they had signed me up for what I wanted, basically just a receipt of sorts.

Which leads to the third issue - my email addresses. I had to dictate the email addresses to the salesman. He got the work email address correct; I had that email waiting for me this morning. But I have yet to receive an email to my home address; I was supposed to get one welcoming me to Verizon, giving links to log into the Verizon customer website, etc. I can only imagine that the sales guy transcribed it wrong, and of course, I had no way to verify it. (See above.) For future reference, how would you dictate ‘chris.hubbs’ as part of an email address? I said “chris dot hubbs” and assumed it was obvious, but I have a bad feeling that there’s an email floating around in cyberspace this morning looking for the ‘chrisdothubbs’ email address. :-(

Conclusion: I guess I’ll have to wait until we get the phones here later in the week to make a final decision. (Oh, another thing that would’ve been nice: a Fedex tracking number for the phones. Probably also emailed to chrisdothubbs.) Overall, it was a pretty good, easy experience last night; a one-page confirmation sheet, though, would’ve taken it from “pretty good” to “excellent”.