“Creative Sales Techniques” beware of what you’re getting…

Many of you may own Samsung Cell phones so I am assuming you may know about the recent requirement to Update your messaging to Google messenger. That is where my story begins.

By July 6^th if you have a Samsung Phone your messenger app will no longer work and there is an update to switch to Google Mesenger. I got a message that the date was drawing near and I should follow the prompts and my messenger would be updated seamlessly to google and all would be well in our 2026 world of technology. I clicked the link, and my prompts came up, and before I knew it, my phone basically crashed.

I usually talk to one of my children when I have problems with my phone. This time I choose to go to my Verizon store on 25a in Rocky Point NY. It was a bright sunny day, the ride over was a pleasant top-down drive. When I arrived, it was a very large show room with one person in the very back corner of the showroom. I was greeted cordially and I explained my problem. I was advised that my phone was overtaken by a virus; and yes, it had to be updated for goggle messenger, but in the process, it was infected and now unfixable.

The sales advisor told me it was unfortunate but there were only two things I could do. One was getting a new phone, the other was, loose everything in the phone and start from scratch. It really wasn’t much of a choice when you use your phone for business and personal use; rebuilding years of #s and contacts is very difficult. He promised everything in my current phone could be saved and transferred. I agreed to going down that route.

He then advised me how I would only pay about $200.00. by trading in my now worthless phone. The new phone was a Samsung Galaxy 26+; he said it was a much better phone and had a better camera and features.

We started the process, he came back with the new phone and a tablet and I declined getting a tablet. He then went to work on prepping my new phone and advised me to come back in an hour.

When I returned the phone was ready and after a few tweaks to the phone I paid for it he gave me a free case and I paid for a protective screen. I was back in business and all was well, I thought. The phone worked great, everything was saved, all my pictures and home page were there, Wow!

The next morning my wife gets an e-mail from Verizon about changes in our plan and to whatch for updated billing. She questioned me about it. To clarify the e-mail, I called Verizon and questioned what the e-mail was about and why? The Verizon representative informed me that because I had a new plan, a new phone Number, a new hotspot my new monthly charges would be over $300.00 and there were other one time charges that were also due. I explained that yes, I got a new phone that was traded in, I did not commit for any of the changes that were made to my account. They replied by completing the sale you agreed: I respectfully said “no I did not” this conversation went on for over an hour and I told the representative I needed my original account re-activated and all the other things removed. They said no we can’t! I said yes, you have to and this led to more back and forth: after an exhausting 45 minutes the representative transferred my call and escalated it.

I was then on hold for 10-15 minutes and a very pleasant women greeted me. She listened to what I described and said she would correct the problems. She said she understood my frustration and would do everything to restore my service and monthly charges and completely understood that I never was advised of the additional things that were put on my account. After about 15 minutes she had corrected all the problems; I had asked her if she knew how long we were Verizon customers for, and why this had happened in a Verizon store. She told me even though the stores are Verizon they have certain sales requirements to meet and the sales people are prone to using what she called” creative selling techniques” to reach their sales goals. I thought to myself dishonesty is not an acceptable way of operating a major company.

In closing to Verizon’s credit, they issued us a $100.00 credit on our next bill. Believe me the credit was nice however the 5-6 hours spent to fix the problem is worth far more!

This was not written using AI

alan b. meschkow