Jaakko's dashboard

I just waited 18 minutes to get through to a Verizon customer "service" representative and was "greeted" for all that time with loud, annoying, unsolicited and totally meaningless advertisments -- aka. voice spam (even the occasional idiotic "please wait, (something really long and useless here)" is better)...
... Only to be followed by a customer "service" rep who thought that, after I told her that the music was annoying and asked if she could "kindly report my feedback somewhere", it was totally necessary for her to tell me that my not liking the smooth background music was--direct quote--"just one highly subjective opinion", which to my understanding means that
one of Verizon's customer "service" manuals must state that:

"One of Verizon's core values is to _not_ respect customers' highly subjective opinions -- and to let them know that"

Kidding aside, what an idiotic comment that was: As if there were any other types of opinions than subjective.

So, during the less than twenty minutes of waiting for a customer "service" rep and chatting with her briefly the number of issues I had with Verizon had tripled. Now, instead of the original issue I had:
* the original issue
* annoyance from voice spam
* a customer "service" rep on the other end of the line who thinks that she=Verizon doesn't need to care about my issues: They are _my_ issues, after all, not her's=Verison's, eih?

Brilliant. Well, it could've been .. at least forgivable if the person would've been able to solve my problem - but that of course didn't happen. The issue was a trivial need to get a phone number of someone who had called me (a telemarketer who had called me even though I'm on the national do not call registry). And no, I wasn't asking for the name but the number only.

For those who don't know (including the ones in Verizon customer service, like rep I talked with), this is something that a phone operator definitely has and that will probably end up showing on my bill (unless the number was hidden .. For readers in Finland: The telephone bills here don't hide the last four digits of the phone numbers).

So, a simple problem swollen into annoyance and a waste of time.

Now, for reasons beyond my understanding I want to share two pieces of free advice to Verizon:

#1: Stop the voice spam. Now.

If you haven't heard of permission marketing you should open your eyes, google it up, and wake up to the 21st century.
... The thing is, that (while not exactly a happy customer before) that 18 minutes was a pain that really makes me to want get rid of your service. I'd _very_ much like to not need to call you again (even for the principle of not supporting spammers) but even more so because hearing that horrible marketing crap again takes away from my zen. Now, if your studies show that there is an idiot segment in your customer base that really _wants_ to hear such bs (which I highly doubt), please add the option to press #2 and not get those ads - and possibly keep us for a little bit longer as your customers. Or send those ads to those people by email.

#2: The customer is king.
(This kind of relates to the first one but just to highlight the point.)

In case s/he still has a job at Verizon, fire the person who introduced the concept of objectivity to your customer "service" manuals. In case you didn't know:

I'm a subject, not an object.