Verizon Sales Channel Conflict Continues

For about 20 years I've been a loyal Verizon Wireless customer, mainly for their network and coverage, not their sales experience. Over the years, I have noticed differences between their phone, online, and in-store sales experiences. I would often experience different promotions and pricing between these channels and even between phone conversations with different sales agents -- even a few minutes apart from a prior call!

My recent experience trying to pre-order a new iPhone 15 with a trade-in shows things have not improved sadly.

Here's a recount of my "comedy of errors" over a 3 hour saga with Verizon...

Contact #1:

I started by calling a sales agent by phone. The rep quoted me $730 trade-in value for my old iPhone and the new phone would be $830. So it would only cost me $100 to upgrade to the latest iPhone. She also confirmed no changes required to my current plan with this offer. And I would have to pay sales tax and a $35 upgrade fee today. That sounded pretty reasonable, but I hadn't decided what color I wanted yet since I didn't really love any of the new pastel-looking colors and what happened to white? So I told her I'd call her back.

I also found out agents can text you their contact info so you can reconnect with them so they can get their sales commission from you.

Contact #2:

Shortly after, I went to Verizon's website to look more closely at the color options for the new iPhone. Since I was already on the site, I decided to place the order online. When I entered my trade-in info, it said "$830 for upgrades." But it also said "Promo credit may change based on other Unlimited plans." What does that mean?

Trade-in Screen

So I ended up starting a live chat on the side when it wasn't clear how much I'd get for my old iPhone. A live chat agent confirmed the $830 trade-in value. I thought great because that's $100 more than what Contact #1 agent told me, so I was not going to question it! But he said I DID have to upgrade my calling plan, for only a few dollars more per month from my current plan. If I didn't, he would offer me only $200 for my trade-in :(

Net net: Between Contact #1 and #2, I got 2 different trade-in values and 2 different plan requirements for the promotion.

Contact #3:

Confused, I decided to talk to a live agent by phone again. This time she confirmed what Contact #2 chat rep said: I would get $830 for my old iPhone and I would have to upgrade my plan. If I didn't upgrade my plan, I would get $0 for it. But the market value was $130 she said. I'm not even sure what that meant! Regardless, $0 or $130 was different than $200 trade-in value I was quoted minutes earlier.

She also said today I would only need to pay the $35 upgrade fee and the sales tax would be charged to my next bill. That's different than what Contact #1 rep told me.

I asked her how many days I had to send in the old phone for trade-in. She said 7 days. That seemed like a tight turnaround, but I felt I could handle it. 

So I proceeded with the order. I'd essentially get the phone for free and pay a few dollars extra per month to upgrade my plan. I felt like it was a good deal. 

Happy that I finally took care of this action item, I was about to move on with my day...until I received the email confirmation for my trade-in. The rep had ordered me a trade-in box for the wrong phone on my family plan! Ugh! So I had to contact Verizon again… 

Contact #4: 

I thought a simple chat session to change the trade-in order would suffice. Wrong! 

After going in circles for about 15 minutes, the chat rep said she couldn't just change or cancel the trade-in for the wrong phone. And said I had to cancel the original purchase order entirely in order to cancel the trade-in order because my order was already being processed. What? Processed? How is that possible if the new iPhone wasn't even shipping until Wed or Thursday?! 

Anyways, I agreed to canceling that order and starting over with her. What choice did I have? I then waited as she replicated my previous order that she canceled. Until she told me to get $830 on my trade-in, I had to upgrade to their Unlimited Ultimate plan. WTF?!?! That was an additional $10/mo higher than what I had agreed to just an hour and a half ago! She insists that was the only way, even though my prior order showed the lower plan. As we debated this over chat, she sent me links to Verizon's website with the trade-in promotion requiring Unlimited Ultimate plan to prove her point.

Contact #5:

Then I remembered how Verizon has had this channel conflict issue for years! So I called them a third time during my chat session. I got a really great experienced sales rep, who did confirm I did NOT need to upgrade to the Unlimited Ultimate plan to maximize my trade-in value. So I proceeded with my reorder with him and told the Contact #4 chat rep that I was talking to a Verizon phone rep who said I didn’t need to upgrade to the Unlimited Ultimate plan. Her only rebuttal was a request for the new order number so she can check it. No thanks! I don’t want her doing anything else to my account.

He also stated I had 14 days to send in my trade-in, not 7 days per Contact #3. (BTW, when I got my confirmation email after this call, it said I had 30 days.)

At payment, he said I had to pay the $35 upgrade fee and sales tax today. Odd because I had just placed a purchase order in the same phone channel and was only charged the $35 upgrade fee! Nonetheless, it was not a deal breaker, but just another example of the inconsistent customer experience.

New iPhone 15

So after spending 3 hours, I think I am set with receiving a new iPhone 15 later this week and the cost offset by my old iPhone trade-in, with just a small plan price increase. I hope 🤞 

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Lessons Learned from an Android to iPhone Convert. Part 3: What I Miss From Android and Like on iOS

I can't believe it's been about 3 months since I converted from my beloved Samsung Galaxy S10 Android phone to the iPhone 14 Pro. In previous posts, I talked about the pitfalls of migrating to iMessage and working with Photos and Files.

While I have gotten used to iOS, there are still a few things I miss from my Android phone.

What I Miss From Android

Pin Live Scores on Home/Lock Screen: For sports fans like me, I loved the Pin Live Score feature. I would often Google search a game for a live update. Once Google returned the results, there was just a "Pin Live Score" button shown on the search results page and I just clicked it. And it stays "floating" on your home screen until you remove it. You can move it to anywhere you want. Super easy!

From Google search, tap on Pin live score

Live score overlay can be placed anywhere on phone screen

Apple has added in iOS 16 Live Activities. But you need a sports app that’s updated for this feature. Or you have to go to Apple News app's My Sports section and select your favorite teams. All of these options take way more effort than the Android Pin Live Score experience!  

Better Predictive Text: I find the predictive text and autocorrect on Android way better than Siri. It's clear Google's AI investments are paying off way more than Apple's. I now understand all the jokes I used to see on social media and from iPhone friends of Siri returning silly autocorrections.

Future Date Alarm: I miss being able to set an alarm for a future date. From the iPhone's Clock app, you can only set an alarm in the next 24 hours or repeat by day of week. But what if I want to set an alarm in 3 days? For example, I like to set an alarm exactly 24 hours before my Southwest flight to try to snag the best boarding number possible. I found a workaround using Reminders app that's not great, but doable.

Alarm in Clock on iPhone

While on my trusty Samsung Galaxy, you can set the time and date far out into the future.

Future Date Alarm on Android

iPhone Finally Got This?

Over the years, I have met iPhone loyalists who think Apple is such an innovator and don't realize that Samsung has typically been more innovative than Apple for smartphones. For example, Samsung embraced the larger screen size and OLED screen technology way before Apple. In particular, with iOS 16, iPhone finally got a few features that I enjoyed on my Samsung for years:

• Ability to shuffle through multiple photos on lock screen
• A haptic keyboard
• Always On display is finally on the iPhone 14, but not the base model. You need a Pro! Luckily I got the Pro. But I have actually had this feature on Samsung for 5 years!

What I Like on iOS

To provide a balanced perspective, there are some features I like on my new iPhone.

Location Settings at App Level: As a privacy advocate, this is one of my favorite benefits converting to iPhone! On Android, it was turn Location On or Off -- pretty much all or nothing if an app I used needed location sharing. Because I didn't like my location always on, every time I used Google Maps for driving directions, I had to turn location on and then turn it off again. This is because Google's advertising business model benefits from geo-targeting, unlike Apple who doesn't rely on advertising revenue.

iMessage: As described in Part 1, one of the main reasons I converted to iPhone from Android was pressure from family and friends to get on iMessage. After a few months, I get why people love iMessage! I have been getting more pics and videos sent to me, and they are high-res. I have been added to existing group chats with other iPhone users. I can easily send people my location temporarily via iMessage when I am on my way.

FaceTime: While there are many ways for video calls, such as via Zoom, Teams, or Google, FaceTime is way easier to instantly video call another iPhone user than I ever realized. And since iOS 15, even non-iOS people can join a FaceTime call! 

Face ID: While I loved the finger sensor in the glass of my S10, I have gotten used to facial recognition to unlock my phone. Although the few times I had to wear a mask, it doesn't work. I guess I could try to configure the mask settings on my iPhone.

Dynamic Island: This is a neat future on the 14 Pro. I mainly use it on calls, while listening to music, and waiting for rideshare car to pick me up. I'm sure there are more use cases I haven't discovered yet. I must say the way Apple programmed how that area on top that replaced the dreaded "notch" moves and dynamically transitions is quite slick!

I'm sure many people will get an iPhone for Christmas. Some may even be Android converts like me. I hope my 3-part series has helped others.

Happy holidays!

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Lessons Learned from an Android to iPhone Convert. Part 2: Working with Photos and Files

It’s been about 2 months since I replaced my beloved Samsung Galaxy S10 for the iPhone 14 Pro. I have adapted to iMessage, despite some of the post-migration issues. 

I do a lot of work on my phone on the go. I’ve always felt like Android was designed for more techie folks and Windows users like myself. While Apple, in the name of ease of use and securing its devices, sometimes appears more restrictive than Android.

Naming Photos

Take the Photos app for instance. I discovered that my new iPhone does not let me rename or save photos with my own file name easily. Instead I have to accept its arcane IMG_XXXX naming convention! On my Android phone, I used to rename photos to make it easier to find or recall what the image was (e.g., bob birthday dinner, company retreat team photo). While I lose the ability to easily rename photos to make it easier to find, you can use the Caption feature in a photo to write notes.

Caption field in Photo

If you REALLY want to rename photos taken, you can Save to Files, which is buried down low after the share options.

Save to Files option from Photo

So after you rename the photo's file via the Save to Files option, you won't find your image under the Photo app. Instead it will be under the Files app. For years, Apple didn’t have what we Windows users call File Manager or Explorer on the iPhone and it's not heavily promoted to consumers. 

Rename photo's filename

Searching Photos

I also discovered the Photo search is quite powerful. If you enter Captions for your photos, it searches that field by default. But iPhone's AI can also detect text IN images you don’t tag. Here's an example with a hypothetical Taylor Swift photo search. A search for “taylor” found mentions in photo caption and text in image. 

Photo search results for "taylor" in Caption

Photo search results for "taylor" embedded in image

Removing Photo Backgrounds

But wait, there's more! Another cool feature I discovered in Photos is like Adobe Photoshop’s "magnetic lasso" to easily remove backgrounds for images. By long pressing a subject in a photo, a white border appears instantly, outlining the subject in the photo you long press. 

Long press photo to start "magnetic lasso" creation

Then you can copy, save or share that subject, auto removing the background. It works amazingly well and super easy to use! How is this cool feature such a well kept secret?

Background removed with "magnetic lasso"

HEIC vs. JPEG File Format

By default, iPhone's Camera app saves photos in HEIC format. For iPhone converts that follow in my footsteps who are Windows users, this can trigger this warning from your PC.

Error message opening HEIC files in Windows

To resolve this issue, don’t forget to change the Camera Capture settings from the default HEIC format to be Most Compatible so you can easily share JPEG-formatted photos with non-Apple and Apple users. 

iPhone JPEG format camera setting

Hope you found some of these tips handy!

Next time I'll cover some Android features I still miss on my iPhone.

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Happy 3rd Birthday, DROID!!!

DROID DOES a third birthday today.

On this 3-year anniversary of the launch of the DROID brand on Verizon Wireless, let's take a look back at how far DROID and the Android operating system has come.

Original DROID

I had the first slider keyboard DROID and loved it for its anti-iPhone-ness. The DROID was (and still is) a strategic brand and product for both Verizon and the Google Android team. It had over 1 million in sales in 74 days! The DROID's debut single-handedly put Android on the map and has since led to Android's stellar growth. IDC announced last week that 75% of new smartphone shipped in Q3 ran Android OS. Of course, not all of those were DROID-branded phones on Verizon.

But as the premium Android brand on the largest US carrier in one of the largest mobile markets in the world, the DROID brand graced many historic phones.

DROID Incredible

DROID Incredible - A truly incredible, large touchscreen phone by HTC that launched soon after the DROID.

DROID X

DROID X - A bold, big, thin phone with strong multimedia capabilities at the time went right after the iPhone and sold like hotcakes.

DROID R2D2

DROID R2D2 - How can you license the DROID name from Lucasfilms and not build a Star Wars-themed phone, right?

DROID Charge 4G

DROID CHARGE 4G - At launch, it was super fast and one of the first devices to exploit Verizon's 4G LTE network. It was an impressive device that demonstrated Samsung's engineering prowess.

DROID RAZR

DROID RAZR - This ultrathin, ultra-sleek DROID even resurrected the RAZR brand for Motorola. Today, Motorola's DROID RAZR family of products are the represent the high-end of Verizon Android phones.

Verizon's DROID brand strategy appears to have worked from 3 years ago. I'm going to upgrade my phone soon and will be looking at a DROID again. And I can't imagine driving without my Google Maps navigation. Apparently, I'm not the only one as the iPhone 5's launch demonstrated!

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My 2 Favorite Mobile Infographics This Week

I'm an infographic junkie. I thought I'd end the week by sharing 2 great infographics recently released with great stats for mobile marketers.

The first was put together by Chomp, 148apps.com, and Chillingo that commemorates Apple approval of 500 million apps for the App Store. It offers a walk down memory lane of Apple's highly successful App Store and key milestones, as well as great stats on the distribution on the types of apps, price of apps, most popular apps, etc. You can click on the image below for the full size of the super-long infographic.

Click image for full-size

The second infographic is from our friends at Microsoft. The Tag team compiled stats on mobile commerce and offers some interesting insights on how mobile fits into the customer shopping journey.

Click image for full-size

Enjoy and TGIF!

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Why I Don't Want to See the iPhone on Verizon

Last week, after Apple did not announce an iPhone for Verizon at WWDC (no surprise really), I got tired of waiting and got a Motorola Droid. And I must say, it's better than I thought! Perhaps I shouldn't be since it's gotten strong reviews, sold over a million units, and has resurrected the Motorola brand. But it's probably because everyone at work has iPhones and this week, they were all going crazy trying to pre-order their iPhone 4.0. But that's another story.

So what's cool on the Droid?

1. Google Voice integration - I love using Google Voice but was annoyed when I called people, it would show the phone number of the device I was calling from and not my Google Voice number. For example, if I called someone who had my Google Voice # in their cell phone, they wouldn't recognize my called ID on their phone. Well, the Google Voice app on the Droid let's me choose for every call if I want my Google Voice # of my device's real phone number to show on the recipient's caller ID. So, now, I can call and receive calls on my one Google Voice #. Awesome!
2. Built in turn-by-turn voice navigation app - Google Maps with GPS already rocks (even iPhone users can't deny that!). Throw in turn-by-turn audible navigation and make the feature native and free, you got a winner!
3. Separate Google and Corporate Email and Calendar apps - I like to keep my personal and work life separate. As a Google OS phone, this is probably no surprise. But I like the fact that there are distinct Gmail and Google Calendar apps, in addition to my Outlook email and calendar.
4. Google Sky Map - Whether you're an astronomer or not, this is cool. Point your phone to the night sky and it overlays the star constellations so you can find the Big Dipper the next starry night.
5. Google Goggles - Have only played with this a little bit. But it's a cool way to search for relevant information based on where you point the camera on the phone. Read more here.
6. ...and there's probably more things I haven't discovered or checked out in the app market

And soon, with Froyo or Android 2.2, I hope to run Flash on my Droid. Take that iPhone!

(Actually, one major pet peeve on Droid: I can't accept or decline meeting invites in Corporate Email program that syncs with my work's Outlook. Talk about #fail!)

So, with my new Droid, I love the legendary Verizon nation-wide coverage and 3G data speeds. I also have an iPad 3G and despite the AT&T commercials you see with Luke Wilson, don't be fooled. Verizon kicks *ss! There are times when I get no signal on my iPad, so I flip open my Droid and I can make calls and surf the web in the exact same spot on Verizon. That's the only proof I need.

Back to the title of my post...why don't I want iPhones on Verizon...even after lusting after it for 6 months? Simple, I'm selfish =) If you believe this report, Verizon could gain 7 to 8 million iPhone users on its network should it carry the iconic Apple phone. I don't want those iPhone data bandwidth vampires on MY network. I'm not foolish enough to think that Verizon won't face some of the challenges that AT&T has faced with capacity on its network. So, I don't want to see my 3G coverage go down...plain and simple.

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Making excuses for one's smartphone typos

Back in the late 90's, I remember thinking how clever it was of Hotmail (pre-Microsoft acquisition) to develop a "viral marketing" vehicle by putting default email footers that said "sent from my free hotmail account" on every outbound email a user sent. Pure genius, even if they weren't the first to come up with that idea.

A few years later, RIM used the same strategy with the Blackberry. Those who sent emails from these handhelds had default "Sent from my wireless Blackberry handheld" in every email. Unlike Hotmail, Blackberry users could actually edit or delete this email footer from their handheld. I did because it annoyed me.

Then came the iPhone, who did the same thing. Funny twist here is that because Apple and the iPhone were deemed as cool, most people I know didn't delete it. Friends who emailed me from their iPhone the first few weeks after launch loved getting replies from me and others who noticed their new email footer and wrote back "Dude, you got an iPhone? Awesome!" They knew the rest of us were jealous and they enjoyed the bragging rights!

But lately, I've been noticing how people have edited these default messages and started having fun with them. Most were excuses about their inability to craft proper emails from them. Thought I'd share a few I've received:

Sent from a slightly malfunctioning iPhone.

Sent from rapid typo device

Please excuse any Blackberry typos.

Please excuse any misspellings from my iPhone.

Sorry for tpyos from my chubby fingers typing on my Blackberry Pearl


That last one is funny because there's a typo in the actual message.

Do you have any funny smartphone email footers to share?

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