Is Verizon’s aggressive sales techniques and terrible support due to recent churn increase?

AT&T and Verizon warn investors of higher Q4 churn as Sprint and T-Mobile increase competition

My family has been a customer for a very, very long time, going back to 2002 at least (although your records only indicate 2009). I had my own mobile software porting company and so I was also a business customer porting mobile applications for all the Brew devices!

And so I am truly disappointed in my recent experience with Verizon. I am used to receiving excellent service and support both at the VZW stores and from the customer service, but it appears that things have really changed!

The aggressive sales techniques followed by extremely poor service are, as I said, very disappointing.

On 2/23/2105 I was at the North County fair in Rancho Bernardo, where I was getting a new iPhone 5 for my son at the Apple store to replace the phone that he damaged. I particularly wanted to do that because he was grand-fathered into the unlimited data plan for the last couple of years and I didn’t want to loose that!

I walked over to the Verizon kiosk at that mall with the new phone to replace the old phone, and the sales agent basically sold me on a new plan saying that he can give all of us  a new phone (ours were just fine, my husband’s and mine) and lower our monthly bill to below $300/month (which I was asking him about as well). He also told me that the unlimited data plans were going to be discontinued so it would make sense to do this switch. He assured me that based on my son’s previous data use for the last couple of months, we would not go over the plan data, which was critical.

So I asked him a few times about this, and he swore to me that everything would be ok.

I returned the phone I bought from Apple to the store, and went ahead and changed our plan, got new phones, etc.

Few days later, I started getting alerts that we were going to go over our allowed data plan! So on March 7th (within the 14 day window) I called VZW service to complain, explained what happened at the VZW kiosk, and asked to have the situation resolved. The service rep said he would try to put my son back on the unlimited plan, but that may take time, and in the meantime he would put me on some other plan, with more data.

I was also promised that my monthly bill would be right around or below the $300/month.

Last week, on 4/3/15, I checked to see our bill, and it was over $400!!! I called your service center yet again, and was told that there was a mistake, and that I would get a $111.95 credit. Today, still NO credit, so I call back. I end up speaking with a supervisor from your Tempa office (Kimmie – would not give me a last name!) and she told me basically that I’m screwed! The $111.95 credit was denied for some reason (although no one called me to tell me), she basically said my new monthly bill would be about $330 plus taxes (so more than it ever used to be) and that it was my problem for choosing the upgrade at the kiosk and not reading the terms and conditions, and that because I was more than 14 days after my warranty I could do nothing more (even though I pointed out to her that I did call within the 14 days, and was told that another change in my plans would fix the data overage problem!). I was additionally asked right away to return my old phones, so I didn’t even have a way to go back to using my old phones. I was also told that I could not get the unlimited plan back for my son, because I upgraded, even though I explained to her that I had the new phone from the Apple store in hand when your eager sales agnet told me he could do better! I even explained to her that since VZW was trying to resolve this problem since March 7th, it shows that VZW took responsibility for this problem, and to now turn it around and make it like it’s all me, is really bad form, and puts me in a no win situation.

I feel that I’m the one being penalized for doing the initial transaction where the Verizon sales agent sold me on this new plan idea. Additionally, the service people seem incapable of really solving my problem, and every time I called I got another promise which turned out to be unfulfilled!

 

Daniel Obodovski explains IoT

My good friend Daniel Obodovski wrote a very good book, The Silent Intelligence, that provides an excellent overview of the internet of things phenomenon. He and his partner, Daniel Kellmereit, discuss topics such as connected cities, connected homes, connected healthcare, connected cars, and various other connected things, both industrial and commercial.

There are some key points that Daniel and I have discussed often which are well summarized in this video interview he did last year. The day Google acquired Nest (yes, the smart thermostat company!) for over $3 Billion Dollars, made everyone start pay attention to IoT, even though Daniel and I have been involved in this high tech area for over 5 years now!

 

 

Wireless Technologies, Big Data and Healthcare

Ok, this is a bit outside of the usual IoT area, but high tech and healthcare are becoming such a hot topic, that I wanted to share this presentation made by my friend, Dr. Mattison (here is his bio).  He spoke at an intimate gathering of TiE here in San Diego in September 2014. (Start video at 15 minutes if you want to go directly to the start of the presentation). In his presentation Dr. John covers everything from why you should wear your Fitbit, to genomics and social networking, and the transformation of what future of practicing medicine holds, and how doctors will again be healers with the help of these various technologies. In his first slide he has a list of books that he recommends, so stop the video and go to Amazon!

 

Perfect stocking stuffers, perhaps for next year, courtesy Kickstarter!

I have followed a couple of start-ups that got their beginning on Kickstarter, even gave one some of my own cash!

The first one is Ninja Blocks, , which peaked my m2m interest with their open source m2m blocks that you can program to do things like turn your lights on/off, run your thermostat, let you know when the door opens, etc. I’m not a developer, just an enthusiast/evangelist, but it looks simple enough even for me, so I’m seriously thinking of getting one of their kits to tinker with… will report on my progress, because if I can do it, then anyone can do it!

Second is Bia Sport, a very innovative GPS Sports Watch designed mainly for women, by women (Cheryl Kellond is the founder and CEO)!! Girls so rock in this case!! Not only is it beautifully designed, but it’s finally a device that works in the water as well as on land, so for a Triathlete like me, it’s an ideal sports device! And again, it’s sooo cool looking! Can’t wait for mine to be ready later in 2013!

Machine to Machine, or “The Internet of Things”, we have a name, now what?

I’m now involved in a new project in the M2M arena, or the Internet of things, the newly coined name by Cisco’s Chief Futurist Dave Evans. I constantly come across the projections of 50 billion connected devices by 2020 in everything from all your appliances being accessed through a facebook-like application where you can get your refrigerator to order your groceries while you’re driving home and your roomba having vacuumed your floor at the same time, to smart meters ensuring energy efficiency, and health monitors allowing your mother to age with dignity in her own home just to name a few.

But I am also finding that there are still many hurdles that need to be overcome to make this future a reality. For now, I can’t even really figure out how to get my mom to be able to use one of the new tablets seamlessly. She doesn’t have Wifi at home, and I don’t really want to spend additional $50/month on a 3G or LTE data plan! My last Verizon bill was already $500 because I went to Europe with my Global Droid and had to pay $2.95 per minute of voice time and $.50 per text! Whatever happened to that  free Wifi everywhere idea that I remember hearing about several years ago?

But I digress. The real problem is how to make all the disparate devices communicate and transmit data in standardized fashion and how to make real sense of the data into information that will help enterprises with their processes and show them that there is real ROI in implementing these costly integrations of sensors, gateways, networks and finally software applications. Oh and yes, having a billing system for it all that somehow makes sense would probably  help too!

Comments on Gartner’s Top 10 trends that will transform mobile between now and 2015

Tech Republic just posted this article listing Gartner’s top 10 trends that will transform mobile between now and 2015: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/top-10-trends-that-will-transform-mobile-between-now-and-2015/9543

In my opinion, another missing trend is Wireless Health, so I’m wondering if Gartner thinks that all the issues with payments, etc will not make it a trend… Hoever, given how much money Qualcomm is investing in it, plus with Continua driving the standardization to enable easier device development, I would think this would make the list before Augmented Reality, which I am not too certain about.

As far as M2M, there are far more other standards to look out for, including Zigby, as well as deeper developments in the data analytics, as was obvious from the last CTIA!

CTIA Enterprise 2011 quick review

Today is Friday, the day after the Fall 2011 CTIA that was held here in San Diego, and so I am writing this while it’s still fresh in mind, although I am still a bit tired.

My very first major discovery was on the very first day, Monday, after I registered, picked up my badge, and started reviewing the show program to see which companies were here, on the exhibit floor, what information tracks I would be interested in, etc. This first discovery was not who was here, but who was not! And that was Qualcomm!!! No booth, no logos, no sponsorships, no tracks dedicated to Qualcomm specifically. Pretty weird considering that San Diego is Qualcomm’s home so you would think they would support CTIA in San Diego…

The exhibit area was pretty well dominated by the M2M related “stuff” – modems, certification companies, tracking companies, integrators, and even Sprint’s big booth was very much all about M2M. Sprint has been in telemetry for a while, so they may be considered a leader in the m2m. I was told by one of their booth guys about a system on airport buses that collects and analyzes on-bus traffic of people using facial recognition software to identify race and gender as well as eye tracking to see what demographic is looking at their on-board screens that deliver ads. This is also used for security as well (duh!).

So the next steps in m2m seem to be more in-depth analytics, which was also one of the big things discussed and promoted, as that Sprint example.

Additionally, both LG and Samsung had very big booth with all sorts of connected items, from tablets and their use as enterprise/business items (airplane seats with built-in tablets), to refrigerators that have recipes on the screen built into the door!

Wireless Health had an interesting session with a panel from EMC Corp, Qualcomm Employee Health, and Blue Shield. Topic focused on how technology and incentives are used to promote better health behavior in the work place. The obvious gap, which was acknowledged when I asked the question, is the lack of real preventive steps. It’s one thing to help people fight obesity, but how about preventing them from getting there and understanding any possible predetermined factors that might contribute and how to personalize preventive capabilities.