I’ve wanted to order a Moto X, but I’ve been waiting for two reasons. First, I upgraded another line — call it line B — from an iPhone 4 to a 5s, and Verizon said I couldn’t change the equipment on line A for two weeks after the order went through. Second, Verizon didn’t support the Motorola customization options. They did go Henry Ford one better: you could have your Moto X in any color you liked, as long is it was black or white. Black would have been OK with me, but somehow I felt that I would be missing out if I couldn’t specify my configuration from all the options. Little did I know.
I went to the Verizon web site, saw that they now supported the whole Moto X configuration gamut, and said, “Upgrade me.” They transferred me to the Motorola web site. I configured my phone — there are only three choices (back color, front color, accent color), and tried to check out. That was when the trouble began. Motorola asked for my Social Security number, my driver’s license number, and several other things that they had no business knowing. I played along. Finally, when I thought I was at the end, they displayed a message that they’d had problems processing my credit card. There was no where to go from there. The “back” button didn’t work, and neither did anything else I tried.
So I called Verizon. They said that they were experiencing a “glitch”, and that they shouldn’t have directed me to the Motorola site. Instead, they should have sent me a PIN to use log on the Motorola site. The word from the rep was that, if I’d just done that, there would have been no problem. I said, “Make it so,” since I was feeling like channeling Cap’n Kirk. The rep said OK, but I needed to accept the T’s & C’s. She said I could do that at the My Verizon web site. I logged on. No T’s and C’s. She apologized, and asked me if I’d be OK doing it over the phone. I said sure. She transferred me to a recoding. I dutifully pressed the right keys, and sat back to await an email message with the PIN I could use to log onto the Motorola web site, and configure my phone.
After half an hour, I got the email, and promptly went to Moto’s web site. I configured my phone, but it was 16gb, and I’d ordered 32 GB from Verizon. There was no option to change that. I ignored that for the moment, and went to check out. Motorola started to ask me to enter my credit card information. That was passing strange, since Verizon had said that they’d add the charges to my account.
I called Moto, and the first attendant hung up on me when I asked if the phone number she wanted was the same one that I’d already entered into the automated system (I have to admit that I was not at my best at this point). I tried again. The rep said that they couldn’t change the configuration, and that I’d have to go back to Verizon. He also said that he couldn’t access my configuration, and therefore couldn’t tell me what they thought they were shipping me.
I logged back in to the Moto site, and found that they thought I was buying three phones, two of which were the right configuration. I deleted two, and checked out, this time without any credit card requests.
I suppose that all’s well that ends well, but I am left with a sour taste in my mouth.
And here’s the thing that ticks me off: Verizon didn’t have to transfer me to the Motorola/Google web site at all; all they had to do was ask me which colors I wanted for the back, front, and accent, and send that information to Motorola.
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