Everyone Hates Verizon
The biggest laugh in Left on Tenth—Delia Ephron’s memoir-turned-play that’s currently finishing up a run in New York City—comes during the show’s opening scene, when the Delia character is arguing on the phone with Verizon. Not surprisingly to anyone who’s ever dealt with that company, Verizon has, in the process of terminating her late husband’s landline, also terminated Delia’s Internet connection. Frustrated to be cut off yet again, Delia declares, to the audience’s delight, something to the effect of “everyone hates Verizon!”
Of course, they do.
And not just Verizon. Americans hate big banks and health insurance companies and regular insurance companies and any big business that’s supremely eager to take their money but not so eager to interact with them outside the billing department.
Something seems to have gone seriously awry in America. And I don’t just mean politically, although there are certainly political aspects to the problem. At virtually every large company, the term “customer service” has become an oxymoron. Reaching an actual employee on the phone requires the dedication and stamina of a marathon runner. And even if you do, eventually, reach a live human being after wading through a company’s labyrinth voice prompt system, the employees forced to interact with customers—the ones you feel fortunate to reach—are often woefully misinformed. Which you only find out when they cut you off and you talk to someone else after forcing yourself to, yet again, plow your way through an endless phone tree in the hopes of reaching the right department. Even Consumer Reports recommends that you hang up and call back if you’re not satisfied with the first response you’re given.
Like most people, I’ll do anything to avoid this hassle. Our cable boxes from DirecTV have been slowly deteriorating for years. But much to my family’s chagrin, I’m happy to keep rebooting those boxes forever as long as I don’t ever have to call the company or, even worse, schedule a service appointment. One time a few years ago, we had a DirecTV tech look at the satellite dish on our roof, tell us he was going out to his van to get a tool and—never come back. That incident and the many, many subsequent calls over the next several, TV-free weeks ultimately resulted in me standing in an aisle at our local Whole Foods store and, to my great shame, yelling on the phone at someone who may have been DirecTV’s head of customer service. I don’t need to go down that road again any time soon.
Unfortunately, though, sometimes life forces you to become the customer who actually needs service.
With my brother’s tragic death a few months ago and my appointment as administrator of his estate, I now spend large portions of my days navigating this universe of “no-customer-service customer service.” Even the most straightforward tasks require at least two steps. Open an estate checking account at Chase? Sure, just provide copies of the necessary paperwork in person at a branch in the state where your brother lived, then return a second time to actually open the account (with paperwork still in hand because the person you meet with may demand to see it again and you don’t want to have to come back for a third visit). It doesn’t matter if you don’t live in that state or, you know, have actual work to do.
Despite its millions of customers—some of whom presumably die every week—Verizon supposedly has no process for the executor of an estate to upload the necessary documents to demonstrate their legal authority to execute a change of address on a cell phone account. Or maybe they do. After several fruitless calls, the person at the Verizon store where I’d been directed to go (official papers in hand, of course) thought there was an online submission process, although he couldn’t tell me what it was. He did know, however, that (contrary to what I had previously been told), if I was submitting the change of address in person, I needed to go to a “corporate” Verizon store, not his regular, retail store.
Everyone hates Verizon.
And don’t even get me started about Vanguard, although my worst recent interaction was probably with my brother’s mortgage company. The call started with the rep confirming that she was authorized to speak with me. But after a brief conversation about an administrative issue, the rep insisted that, before we could talk further, I had to fax them my brother’s death certificate. When I questioned why I had to send it again, she claimed the certificate had never been submitted. It took ten minutes of argument, as well as digging through my records for the exact date and time of my original fax, to convince her that she couldn’t possibly be authorized to speak with me unless the death certificate had in fact been received. Ultimately, she agreed. Then she demanded I send “proof” of my sibling relationship.
WHAT?
Not even the rep knew how I could go about proving I was my brother’s sister; there’s no “certificate” for that. She just knew they “had to have it.”
Which is one of the biggest problems with our current system of no-customer-service customer service. There are not nearly enough employees to answer customer calls, and once you do finally get one on the line, they must follow a rigid script, no matter how illogical it may be for your particular situation. And “escalation” to a supervisor may be the pipe dream of a bygone century if the company you are contacting penalizes call-center employees for not resolving issues satisfactorily—they’re never letting you talk to a supervisor.
After a prolonged debate on the proof of the sibling relationship, I told the rep that I’m listed on my brother’s obituary, which she seemed to think would be the kind of evidence she needed. When I pointed out they could get the obituary directly since it was readily available online, her shock was palpable. “We can’t look that up,” she said, seemingly aghast I would dare suggest such blasphemy. Instead, I had to look it up myself, create a PDF file, write a cover letter, and fax both to the number provided by the company. Where it will no doubt be filed with the death certificate, never to be found again.
Perhaps all of this effort won’t be the colossal waste of time it appears. After all, living up to her sister Nora Ephron’s admonition that “everything is copy,” Delia wrote about her battle with Verizon in a 2016 essay in the New York Times, an essay that connected her with a potential suitor and started the love story that is the subject of her play. Perhaps someday I can channel Delia’s energy and turn my fight with the mortgage company and everyone else involved in this never-ending saga into a newspaper article and book and Broadway show. Right now, though, I’d just be happy to never call another customer service number again.