Tales of Verizon
Normally I can’t stand making small talk at a store. I like a nice, brief in/out retail experience, and always have. Last night when I went to the Verizon store to get my phone upgrade to the LG Voyager I found myself shanghaied into conversation.
I probably should have seen the writing on the wall ahead of time, though, because T was with me, which typically means conversation will ensue. She’ll talk to anyone as if they’ve been friends for years while standing on line. It’s this whole big thing.
Much to my surprise, however, I found myself actually engaged because of probably the best retail chit-chat story I’ve ever heard. I don’t even care if the guy was embellishing, this story made me laugh so hard… because it’s so typical.
He told the tale of a guy who came in last week for an upgrade and at the same time wanted to knock off the $10/mo unlimited txt messaging charge (which meant he’s go to the default $.20/message sent or received charge. As he’s asking for this, and as my sales guy is making the change in the system, the customer is feverishly sending and fielding text messages. “He must have sent and received literally 20 messages in 5 minutes, just while waiting…”
For those keeping track at home, that’s a $4 tally if my guy was being accurate.
He said, “sir, you’ve just been texting for 5 minutes straight…”
The customer says, “Oh, yeah, sorry. I guess that was rude.”
The Verizon guy says, “No, it’s not that. But I have to ask if you’re sure about taking this unlimited messaging off. If you text all the time you’re going to be paying a lot more than $10/mo.”
“Oh,” says the genius customer. “I guess I didn’t realize how much I was texting…”
You think?!
I wonder how many people have actually gone through with this idea… thinking, hell I don’t need to pay that $10/month. I’ll just drop it! And then end up paying tons more because they habitually text so much.
I hope most of them are teenagers.