May 11, 2008

I spam you! (thank you Verizon, you suck)

Yes, I pay for a service that lets me send marketing messages to you! And I can't turn off those marketing messages! Isn't life wonderful?

If you've read my blog recently, then you have way too much free time. That, and you know that I love the ability to snap a photo with my camera phone and blog it immediately with a little bit of text that I painstakingly poke out at a rate far slower than my 300 baud modem back in college. But I hate the stupid marketing text Verizon automatically tacks on to the end of each message. If I emailed a photo from my phone to you, you would get the text also. If I blog it, the text shows up in my blog. It's something like this: "This message was sent to you via the magic and wonder of the outstanding awesome terrific Verizon service. Find out how you, too, can be one of the cool people! Click here!!!!!!!!" (I'm paraphrasing.)

Well, I emailed Verizon to ask how to turn off that awful spam marketing shit. Guess what? I can't! Even though I pay for the service! (OK, technically my company pays for it, but that's just accounting.)

Here is the surprisingly chipper nose-thumbing I got from their customer "service" department. (I think "customer service" here means "happy people who say 'no' a lot.")

Dear Peter Dudley,

Thank you for your excellent question regarding the Verizon Wireless tag at the end of your e-mailed picture messages. My name is [name withheld for the blog], and I am able to assist you.

I am sorry, but at this time we are unable to block these messages from appearing at the end of your messages.

I will be sure pass your comment and dissatisfaction onto our Marketing Department for review

Peter, I thank your for your valuable feedback today. I want you to know that we appreciate your business and thank you for using Verizon Wireless. Should you have additional questions, please reply to this e-mail.

Sincerely,
[name withheld for the blog]
They are just SOOO happy to get my valuable feedback, which will be passed along to Marketing. What this means: "I am stuck in a shit job where I can't actually do anything about your complaint, but you're right, this asinine text is the work of the evil ghouls in the Marketing Department, so I'll send them your note, but don't expect it to do any good because there's no accountability for the happiness of the customer in this lame company."

But [name withheld for the blog] sure did use a lot of nice words to tell me I'd be more effective setting myself on fire, didn't he?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sucks. AOL does the same thing - I still pay for their service but my email messages include ads. I'm guessing that eventually babies will be born already tattooed with corporate logos...

Blogless Troll said...

Great rant. It must be effective though, if they continue to do it. I was going to say that the only way it'll stop is if more people like you register dissatisfaction, but it'll probably take angry emails plus the canceling of service. Probably that won't even work.

JaneyV said...

I enjoyed the rant. Man it's frustrating isn't it? Don't worry about the crap they send though. I've already started to mentally filter it out. I see Verzion - I skip a couple of lines!
These customer service guys have the worst jobs. It's like a bad karma nightmare. Don't waste your energy. However if you were paying for it ....

Sarah Laurenson said...

Hm. It sounds more like your customer service rep was one of those guys in India who inserts stock phrases into his reply. I've run into a few of those who don't really answer my question cause it gets out of the range of their stock answers.

Yeah. They do it because they can, but it didn't start here. Look at all the license plate frmaes that advertise the car dealership or repair shop. And how many people leave that free ad on their cars and drive all over with it? I take it off ASAP. Sometimes I tell them to take it off. No free advertising on my car.

writtenwyrdd said...

He who shall remain nameless not only was very polite in saying eff you, he gets all informal and uses your FIRST NAME, thereby implying you are on equal footing but not, implying that he actually has more power.

Regarding what Aerin said, they can put info on dna now, it's only a matter of time before they tag us with retrovirii, I think.

Anonymous said...

Sarah I'm with you. Every time I buy a car I have the dealer remove their ads off my car. I got to expense of buy a (license) plate holder that has no ads on it. Maybe I should put a sigh on my car that reads, ”Your Ad here for the low cost of a 2 tanks of gas per Month”

Ello - Ellen Oh said...

Geeze I didn't even notice about any ads. I guess I am clueless. but whoo hoooooo on the rant! I love rants. Although this is pretty mild. And the verizon dude was so polite and nice as he said "HA HA!"

;o)

Chris Eldin said...

I was going to say getting angry isn't enough for these kind of marketing assholes. You actually have to cancel service.

Shouldn't be that way,