VV Day: Victory over Verizon

Consumerist has been hot on the trail of Verizon since they notified customers of a change to their service agreement. Basically, with or without a text messaging plan, you're going to have to pay for text messages to and from international carriers (which the current plan covers), and the rate for them is going up from $0.10 to $0.15 per message. That means if Guapo in Honduras spams your phone with a text message from Donkey Cellular, you're getting a bill.

Since I love any opportunity to play hardball with the Ivan Seidenberg gestapo, I decided to make an issue of this and see if I could get a better deal on a contract extension. Instead, they rolled over and waived my early termination fee so I can go elsewhere.

Thank you for contacting Verizon Wireless through our website. My name is April, and I am happy to provide you with the details on how to port your number out. However, we value you as a wireless customer, and would like the opportunity to retain your business.

I regret to hear of your decision to cancel your service with Verizon Wireless and port your wireless number to another service provider. In the event that you do chose to port your number out, you will not be billed an Early Termination Fee.

Now that I got exactly what I want, I need to figure out what I'm going to do about it. I mapped out my usage for the past six months:



I keep coming back to the same judgments I made a year ago when I switched to Verizon (in order from best match to worst match):

Selection of phones: 1.) Cingular 2.) T-Mobile 3.) Verizon
Quality of service: 1.) Verizon 2.) Cingular 3.) T-Mobile
Service plans: 1.) T-Mobile 2.) Verizon 3.) Cingular

fucking ::sigh::