I made the switch today and I can say I've never had a worse customer service experience.
After the two recent price hikes my AT&T bill was closing in on $100/mo. After my military discount my plan with Verizon will be $71 before taxes, so less than $80/mo.
I bought my 7+ at Target. It is a factory unlocked model. Did the port from AT&T to Verizon while at the store, put the new sim in and was greeted with an "Invalid sim" message. Verizon rep said "your phone must be locked." Called AT&T and was told my phone was on contact until January of next year. I explained that that was incorrect and I had a 5s that I had purchased on contact just before they stopped offering them and the 7+ is MY phone that I purchased outright.
AT&T rep said there's nothing they can do for me since my number had already been ported so I had to port BACK to AT&T to have my factory unlocked device released from their network. The port back was a fairly quick process but the rep that said he was in the process of pushing through my unlock transferred me to some random department out of nowhere so I had to re-explain the whole situation to the new rep who had to transfer need again.
The next rep I got was extremely rude and continuously told me any phone I purchase through AT&T is going to be locked to their network. I told her for times that I had purchased at Target, not AT&T. I'll admit I started to get a little frustrated and may have raised my voice a bit and she hung up on me. Time to start all over again.
The next gentleman I was able to connect to was extremely nice and apologized for the inconvenience. Said he would get everything set and connect with technical support and explain the whole situation for me before bringing me onto the call. Waited on hold.... and waited. And waited. Call disconnected.
The NEXT rep was another of the lovely gems we all abhor and told me anybody that told me an unlock request could be expedited didn't know what they were talking about and I needed to call retentions. I asked her to transfer me and she said she couldn't do transfers because of the tropical storm (yes, seriously). I asked for the number for retentions and she gave me the general AT&T customer service line.
By this time, three and a half hours later, I had to head to work. Sitting in the parking lot at work I decided to give it one more shot. Got a great rep, explained everything all over again, and to my relief was told that it would be taken care of. Sat on hold for less than 10 minutes and was told the unlock had been put through and my early termination fee waived. Hallelujah.
Called the rep at Verizon that I had been working with and left a voicemail saying we were good to go. She texted me back saying she would initiate the port in five minutes. 20 minutes later I get another text saying "there's nothing else that can be done with this number today. You'll have to call us tomorrow." I called Verizon on my break and waited for 25 minutes on hold (my entire break) before having to hang up and go back to work.
Half hour later I get a call from the rep that had pushed through the unlock saying the port had gone through and I need to reboot my phone. After a reset I have a Verizon signal with LTE data. Awesome! Text my fiancé to tell her all is well and I get "who's this?" back. Turns out they activated a temporary number on my sim to hold my account while I ported back to AT&T to fix the locked phone issue. Took another 40 minutes for them to remove that number and put my number in over top.
I sure hope Verizon's coverage is as good as everyone claims. I'd hate to drop them and go back to AT&T after this nightmare.
