I appreciate your frustration. I really do. I worked in the customer service profession (for telecom companies and large US Banks.) I have been on the other side of this coin more times than I would like mention. Of course, the telephone computer system did not go down—just the retail ones. Imagine a million angry phone calls in a day. I am glad that I left that behind a few years ago.
I really did not intend to come across nasty or mean.
On the other hand. I ordered both mine and my daughter’s over the internet at the Verizon web site. All in all it did not take long at all. When it came, the instructions for getting it going were as simple as “plug it in.”
Ordered on Day A and got it Day B.
The other advice is to order the insurance. The first one I had was dropped into a cup of coffee. Insurance got me another one. The second one lasted a week before the died a natural albeit early death. I got another in a day. I use the phone as a modem when I am on the road for work so it is critical for my work.
I hope you get the phone thing cleared up. It is truly an amazing piece of technology.
Again, I must have been typing before I took my happy pills. I apologize for coming across like a dope.
Apology accepted. No problem.
Re: ordering online. My husband has a guy at the Verizon store that he has been working with for at least 10 years. They have a common love - fishing. So part of the deal is to go to the store, get a new phone, and swap fishing stories.
He got his iPhone today and so far, he’s delighted. He would have actually been happy with a regular phone, but I urged him to go iPhone (imagine that - the wifey talking her hubby into getting an electronic gadget-must be a first!). He’s a manufacturer’s rep with a large customer database (was using an iPod Touch with Filemaker) and fields calls all day long and even into the evening. Now he can have all he needs in one device rather than two.
We also had a MiFi which we used when RVing - at least two months out of the year. The cost of having the iPhone and using that as a hotspot while on the road is about the same as having the MiFi, so for me it was a no brainer. He wasn’t so sure the iPhone hotspot would work as well as the MiFi. We’ll see in a couple of weeks when we go out into the boonies. How has your experience been with the iPhone/hotspot connection?
Being able to access the web and receive/send emails 24/7 will be a great convenience to him which he will come to appreciate, I know.
As we found out, the outage yesterday was nationwide and even affected customer access to their own online accounts. No report on why it happened, but all was fine today.
Again, no harm done. Best wishes.