If you’ve never heard of it, Verizon is a telecom company based in the U.S. that has over 92 Million customers, covering more than 30 million homes as well as around 2 million businesses.
With their ever so helpful support which will aid customers by providing activation of both services and devices as well as with their upgrades, Verizon is present in so many houses and companies all over the world.
Recently, in so many online Q&As, communities and forums, Verizon’s clients have been mentioning having a hard time with the fees the company charges for their services, and that is difficult to find ways not to pay them.
Even though the company offers a large range of solutions for home and business telecommunications, customers are still unsatisfied with the obligatory update fees charged by Verizon.
In this article, we will walk you through some strategies customers can use in the attempt of having the upgrade fee waived.
Since updates happen constantly, either for the mobile data packages or home wireless network plans, the updating of equipment also adds up to the list of fees customers are referring to as unfair to be charged. And we agree, naturally!
Due to the constant reporting of customers about such update fees, we came up with some options for users to have the desired, and sometimes necessary updates, without the obligation to pay the corresponding fees.
Bear in mind that such fees will only be charged in the event of an update in your equipment or in your service packages, so if you want to be 100% sure there will be no fees, avoid updating your devices and plans.
Do a bit of research first to make sure you know what you’re getting into.
Verizon Upgrade Fee Waived?
What Are Your Chances of Not Paying the Update Fee?
The first option is not having the company as an intermediary between the customer and the updating. This means the user will have to perform the update themself. This will effectively waive the fee since the company is not actually carrying out any kind of service to the user.
However, customers may not be able to perform the updates on their own in some situations.
Starting from the fact that is not in the interest of the company to waiver the fees, since that adds up quite a bunch of money to their revenue, customers will be asked to request not to pay them as the initiative will definitely not come from Verizon.
One of the ways to request the waiving of the update fee is to change out your Verizon phone for an unlocked one. Doing this will enable customers to use their old SIM cards in the new devices in an attempt to receive a better signal.
That should actually work, and the fee will not be charged since the new device is an unlocked one. Users will also still get the same quality and stability of signal reception.
What Happens If I Just Ask Verizon?
Another way is to request the fees waived by contacting the company Customer Support via their chat service, where professionals of Verizon will very likely offer customers a discount of half of the upgrade fee.
This is not sure to work 100% since it depends on who the other person on the other side of the line is.
There is a chance that whomever you are talking to may not be so kind as to suggest waiving half of the fee. Customers will always have the chance to insist on the waiver and their chances will probably be higher if they are tactful enough when dealing with Verizon’s support agent.
Should none of the two options above work, the company itself offers a way that, although not very much sought by customers since it seems like the most work. This is, of course, to attempt the self-service upgrade.
This form of upgrading will automatically cut the fee by 50%, since the customer is doing at least half of the work.
But even after that, there’s still the chance to request the waiving of the other half via chatting with customer support. Should customers be successful, there will be a total of 0% in upgrade fees to pay! For that reason, we think this is probably the best option for most.
As customers report the injustice of Verizon charging of upgrading fees so often, the company has a sensible social destination for the income related to such fees.
Verizon promises to destine the income to further enhance their customer service call-centre, their increasing network (which favours customers in the end), and even to aid schools that face financial difficulties, which states their social responsibility intentions. So, we would suppose that they aren’t all that bad! At least that money is going somewhere useful.
Talk to a Supervisor
This article has already listed a few options for customers who are looking to have the upgrade fee waived by Verizon, and the abovementioned strategies should work for most people who use gentle and kind tones to request their update fees to be waived.
It’s important to remind customers that although the options listed here are quite sure to be successful, there’s no actual guarantee the upgrade fee will really be waived. If customers are still not achieving the desired amount of waiver by contacting Verizon’s customer support and requesting it, the last resort is to appeal to their Retention Department.
This department holds the higher responsibility employees who deal with customers issues, such as supervisors. This means customers have a second shot in case the kind and gentle chat agent still didn’t waive the update fee for them. By talking to a higher level of authority, supervisors can always go over the decisions of the customer support agents.
However, they will also be more responsive to gentle and kind tones when contacted. Another factor worth mentioning is that supervisors usually receive some form of credits or benefits when they manage to keep unsatisfied customers. This can be turned to work in the favour of users when they are in need of fee waivers, for example.
But it’s not just a matter of going over the chat agent and reaching the supervisor for your waiver to be conceded, as the higher authority employees will ask customers for reasons why they should relieve them from the obligation of paying the fee.
This is where customers bring up their best arguments, such as being a good payer and keeping your bills covered beforehand or demonstrating their fidelity to Verizon by claiming they have always favoured Verizon’s products and services other than getting their solutions from different companies.
Finally, once customers reach the Retention Department and claim their fee waiver based on the logic that they are good clients for the company, supervisors will probably not have any obstacles in cutting the fee, even in their entirety.
The Last Word
On a final note, if customers are not looking to spend too much time chatting with agents and Retention Department Supervisors, there’s always the possibility to use the company app, My Verizon, to perform the desired updates. Doing so will automatically save half the price users would pay when attempting the procedure in stores.