Going email nuclear on Verizon

A few weeks ago, in early May, I had the worst.ever.experience with Verizon.  Back in January I tried to bundle my home phone (we'd been using Vonage) with my Verizon internet account because the phone was basically free when I did that.  I've had that account on auto-pay for 7 years, since we've lived in this house, and so I kept it on autopay.  Money kept coming out, the phone worked, everything worked, I was happy.

Until late March when Jonathan started getting emails saying we were going to lose our phone service due to nonpayment.  How can that be, I wondered.  It's on autopay.  I called, and it turned out the stuff was never bundled.  They set up a separate account, and the bill was going to my home address - we live in a rural area and don't get mail at home, so everything has to go to the PO box, and so I never saw a bill.  Since the money kept coming out, and everything worked, I'd never even thought about it.

So they tell me they're going to try to bundle it back, and it will take about 10 days, and the charges will be dropped since it was incorrectly bundled.  Then about 2 weeks later we get another call.  We're losing service tomorrow if we don't pay.  I asked how that could be, because the first person said she was going to bundle it properly.  No, the guy said, she can't bundle it because it was on a financial hold.  You can't do anything with a financial hold on.   So he takes the financial hold off for 24 hours so I can sort it out.  I call someone else, get bundled, and they even throw in my DirecTv for free, and there you go.  Sorted.  I asked about the charges, and the girl couldn't even find the other phantom account, so she tells me the next time I get a call about it, get the account number and then call her back, and she'll put credits on the account.  I got a call a few days later, got the account number, left a message with the info, and I figure it's all good.

I go to New Zealand.

I come back from New Zealand and everything still works.  When I log into the account online, everything is there properly.  I'm thinking it's all sorted.  Until a week later when I wake up and there's nothing.  No internet.  No phone.  No TV.  Nothing.  I look online, and apparently when the stuff all got bundled, the charges got moved over as well, and even though the account was on autopay for 7 years, they shut off the service.  I paid $400 to get it turned back on, which I shouldn't have had to pay since it was their error in the first place, and I wait.

But that's where the fun begins.  It never came back on.  I called several times through the day and kept being told it would be turned back on in 2 hours.  I wait 2 hours, nothing.  Day 2 comes along, still nothing.  I call again.  They escalate it.  Wait another hour.  Nothing.  I talk to supervisors and managers.  Nothing.  No one seems to be able to explain to me why my account isn't working.  I'm trying to work using my neighbor's wifi, but keep having to call every few hours to check on it.

I talk to customer care people, and customer care supervisors, and it turns out that...wait for it...my account has been completely cancelled due to nonpayment.  No one could see that before?  Seriously?  I paid $400 to get service turned back on, which I shouldn't have had to pay since it was their f-up, and the account doesn't even exist any longer?  WTF?  I talk again to customer care people to get a refund.  No, they can't give me a refund, they say, because it was for services that I had received.  No, it was for services I was mistakenly charged for since you guys f*cked up the bundling.

I'm getting mad just thinking about it again.

Anyway, we finally called Charter, they came the next day, everything got installed, life was happy again.  I cancelled everything with Verizon, and while I was still steamy over it, I just figured I'd move on.

But then I started thinking about it, and about how rude the managers were, insisting that I had to pay the fees that I was mistakenly charged without even looking into it, and how they couldn't even tell that the account had been cancelled, and how I waited for 2 days with nothing working and no one calling me back or giving me any information as to why, and I got really mad again.

So I went email nuclear.  I drafted up an email with my long story, and I sent it to every Verizon executive I could find.  I sent it to the CEO, the COO, the CFO, every person listed on their website as being part of the executive team.  I guessed around to get the email addresses - I looked at some press releases to see what the general formula was - ie first.last@verizon.com - and then tried a few variations.

I sent it to something like 40 addresses, and 7 bounced.  I got a few out of office responses, too.  I'm not sure who all saw it, but that very night I got one response.  The next day I got three calls from different divisions.  The best part of the whole thing was that finally somebody got the situation and didn't just give me the stock "I'm sorry for the experience you're having," line (I wanted to shoot the next person who was going to tell me that) and they really got how frustrating it was, and they actually seemed upset about it.  One woman said, "I was reading your email, and with each new paragraph I was thinking, 'Oh my ever loving Lord,'" so that was cool.

The end of the story is that they are refunding me all the fees I had paid to get the service turned back on.  They saw the bundling error, and they are trying to figure out what happened there (was it a computer glitch or was it a personnel error).  They have listened to the phone calls I made, and have given feedback to the various people who were really rude (Dianne, the collections supervisor, I'm talking to you right now).  I had also passed on the people who were good - Laura in the California call center who finally bundled everything, and Jennifer in billing, who had agreed to give me a partial refund (though I hadn't received it when I sent the email blast).

Also, someone from Verizon wireless called me, and is saving me $50/month off my bill.

So, all told, I'm now a turned around customer, and am pretty happy with Verizon.  The way they followed up, and continue to follow up to tell me the status of the refund, etc., was way above and beyond what I had expected.

The only thing that sucks is that I had to research the executives, research the email addresses, and send that email out to everyone.  I'm guessing most people who have bad experiences with front line call centers wouldn't go to that trouble.  They'd be like I was and just say, "screw them, I'm moving over to Charter," and that would be it.  My email saved me $1000 - the $400 payment and the $600 off my cell phone bill.

I'm going to still stick with Charter since they got everything hooked up so quickly, and I'm happy with them, but I'm so pleased with the way everyone in the executive offices at Verizon responded, and I'll stick with them for my cell phone.

So, in sum, if you're going to do a nuclear email blast on a company, it can pay off.  But just make sure that you really do have a case; it's just not you being pissy because you don't like your bill.  Make sure that you've tried to get it resolved through the normal channels, and this is only the final solution.  And research the executives to make sure you get the right people.  You can usually find executive teams on hoovers (a business and company database) or on their website, or on business databases at the library.  It takes some work and effort to do something like that, but as I saw, it can pay off in the end.

So this is my official Thank You to Verizon for getting back to me.  It's just a bummer that I had to go nuclear on you to get the service, but I'm glad that when I finally did, you took care of it so quickly.

Shabby-Fertility-Chic

So one of the drawbacks of fertility treatments is that it's expensive.  You get all crazy from the hormones, and you get to pay a lot of money for the privilege.  Consequently we are taking budgeting to a new level.  I'm not really a fan of getting into more debt over a reluctant baby, so we're cutting back on all kinds of fun stuff (travel, Target) for now.  Since we know it's for a finite period, it makes it much less difficult, and we can see it as a bit of a game.  That being said, once we get done with this, I'm going to try to keep up my new habits so that we can continue to save money.

For example, I never buy anything without first searching for coupons.  My mom was/is a passionate coupon-er, but it's been a long time since I've scoured the Sunday paper with scissors.  I feel like an Old Person for what I'm about to say next - bear with me - And now there's the Internet!  (See?)  I had no idea that you could literally just google, oh, "Viva paper towels coupon" and get a dollar off.  Who knew?  Well, I guess the people who are saving a dollar on my paper towels knew.  But I never did.  I feel like a total putz now.  I already felt putzy enough because I didn't catch on to Gagnam Style until it had like 300 million hits on youtube.

Anyway, we're also cooking everything.  Like, everything.  In the past month or so I've made cheese crackers, soft pretzels, and potato chips from scratch.  I've cooked all kinds of new dishes like a kickass tofu carrot curry.

But the holy grail of making your own snack foods are pop-tarts.  Again, call me late to the party - apparently people on Pinterest have been making pop tarts for years.   But better late than never.

I love pop-tarts.  But I'm not a fan of the junk they're made of.  Or what a rip-off they are.

So I made my own.  I wimped out and used pre-made pie crust (but that's only because I had made my own pie crust for a mushroom-and-leek tart earlier and was feeling especially lazy)

Assemble the following:

Premade pie crusts
one egg
filling - I used strawberry jam  That Smitten Kitchen recipe lists all kinds of super ideas like savory pop tarts, ones with nutella, etc.  I'm going to experiment.

Cut out dough into a pop tart shape.

Cover one side with a light coating of beaten egg

Fill with jam (I'm going to need to practice this to see exactly how full to stuff them - mine keep exploding)

Cover with the two egg-covered sides going together (the egg somehow binds the crusts together)

With a fork, press down around the edges so that the two sides are together

Poke some holes in the top

Bake at 400 for about 13-15 minutes (keep an eye on them to watch when they look brown)

Take out of the oven, and let them cool

Eat without feeling guilty

Below I have my final result.  The little ones actually came out really good.  The big ones were too big, and I had stuffed them too much, so the one exploded.  Still it wasn't bad for a first try.  I'm definitely going to do them again, and make them smaller.  Still, for the equivalent of about 12 complete pop tarts, even splurging on the pre-made pie crusts, I was about about $4.50.  ($2.29 for the pie crusts, $.30 for an egg, and $1.99 for the strawberry preserves).  And they aren't loaded with a bunch of gunk I don't even want.

I like this thrifty thing.

Resolutions Schmezolutions

So here we are at another January and I'm doing more resolutions. Actually, I kind of enjoy it. Yesterday I listed all the ares of my life that are important to me, and what I wanted to accomplish with them this year. It's kind of fun to think about, and create the year. So here are some things I'm going to accomplish in 2010:

1. Write - like, seriously, like my life depends on it. Because, in some ways, it really does. I say that I want to be mobile and have a life that is split between LA, PA and London, with travel on the side as well. It's kind of hard to do that with a "real" job. So I really feel like writing is where it's at, especially because reading and writing have always meant so much to me. So this year, the goal is to write for 6 hours a week (that's an hour a day, give or take) and also to take my journaling seriously. Also, I'm going to finish, edit and publish my 2009 NaNoWriMo book, which is one that I'm really loving.

2. Exercise - like, seriously, again, like my life depends on it. Because in a much more real way, it does. I putter around on my elliptical 5 times a week already, but that's kind of lame because my muscles are already used to it, and it's kind of like sleepwalking. I don't do any weights, or core exercises, and that's important as I get (ahem) older. So I bought an exercise ball and have started using it, and am going to do push-ups - starting with my knees bent because I'm lame, but growing my strength so that by the end of the year, I can do 25 push-ups with my legs straight. That's the goal.

3. Go back to London more - At least twice this year. I get lazy because I hate leaving home, but really, that's where my soul belongs, and I need to spend more time there. I get inspired, I get in action, and I come alive when I'm there.

4. Financial - One thing I know is how to make money. Unfortunately, I also know how to spend it with the best of them. So this year, I'm going to try an experiment: I'm going to try to live off of half my salary and save the rest. That will allow me to do things like to go London a lot without charging it on a card. It will also allow me to build up a nice little nest egg for the time when Baby Heather comes along and we need to buy foreign things like diapers and cribs. Weird. And really, lord knows I seriously don't need more scented candles or faux-designer bags from Target. It's all just more junk to move someday anyway.

So those are four of my big resolutions for the new year.

And a funny thing happened during the keeping-of-a-resolution: I decided to go for a hike around the lake this morning, as the weather was nice and it wasn't too freezing. So I get there, park the car, and take my car key off the chain as always, and also as always, I tuck it into my underwear. This is what I have always done, since the days when I began running 15 years ago. Yes, I carry my car key in my underwear. So sue me. So it was slipping around, and I was like, "man, I've gotta find a new place for this key" and then reached in by my hip, and it was no longer there. I shook out my clothes, and nothing. I went back and forth along the path five times, and no key. What the hell, right? Right. So then I finish walk, call hubby and he gets our neighbor to drive him to get me because I have no key. We are going to walk the bit of path where I lost it again, looking more carefully, when suddenly I feel it in an unmentionable. It had moved around and I basically had key-butt. Which was funny because I'd had key-butt for three miles and hadn't felt it. Weird.