Verizon — Local services in Lake Forest

My family has been a customer of Verizon for over 30 years and we have mainly used this location for all our needs. We have always had great customer service and no real issues with upgrading, changing or adding to our plan; until now. We recently went into this location to upgrade our phones and were told several things that apparently are incorrect. We were charged fees and told they were taxes when it in fact they were upgrade fees. They quoted us $700/phone turned in and only received $400 credit because that was the actual policy. AND we are now waiting for a phone that was suppose to ship weeks ago but has been delayed because the fees we paid, apparently didn't process. We visited this location again this morning (for the third time since originally going in to upgrade) and we were treated HORRIBLY. I have worked in customer service for YEARS and this is no way to treat a customer that has a problem. They honestly didn't seem to actually care about current customer, they only seem to care about a sale. We asked to speak to the manager right away since this issue has been going on for a few weeks and he didn't care to speak to us at all. After we started telling him the issue, he told us to wait so he could greet and meet all the other customers that were coming in. After 15 minutes, he came back to talk to us and told us he didn't have time to look into our issue because the store was busy and he had to work with other customers. He said he couldn't look into the issue because the sales person who spoke with us the first time wasn't in (When really he should be able to see all our history on the computer and policies should be standard, not salesperson to sales person). This just confirms that they are more interested in the sale and not the customer. When asking about the phone that was supposed to be shipped weeks ago, he told us he would have to call and check on it, and then followed up by saying we should just do that ourselves. So after all of this, we have now learned that this location has HORRIBLE customer service and they seem to just want to upsell. AND you can do everything yourself over the phone or online and that way ends up being cheaper. So we will never visit this location again and we will, from now on, only deal with upgrades, changes, or any issues online or...

The Lake Forest Verizon store is located about 1-2 miles from my parents' house. My mother, a senior citizen, is used to using an Android/Google operating system. Her phone was having problems, so she went to the store and was sold an iPhone. After about three days, she struggled with the new phone, as she isn’t very comfortable with technology.

I accompanied her to return the iPhone and purchase a Google/Android phone on the day of a national Verizon outage. Earlier that morning, my mom had gone to the store to return the iPhone, thinking the issues she experienced were user errors. She told them she didn’t want the phone regardless and wanted to go back to a system she understood. They told her to return once her phone started ringing again after the outage was resolved.

Later that afternoon, her phone started working, and I went back with her to help choose a new phone. The sales reps at this store, especially one named Khalil, were incredibly pushy, insisting that she keep the iPhone because it’s supposedly an easy operating system. Khalil mentioned there were in-store classes available to teach people how to use the iPhone, then rushed through a tutorial saying, “See, it’s easy,” while continuing to push her to keep the phone.

He was stated that we would have to wait three hours to switch back to her previous phone. If the iPhone were such an easy system, why would there be classes needed to learn it? My mom has never needed classes to use her Android phone.

A good sales rep should want their customer to be satisfied and happy with their purchase to ensure loyalty. Unfortunately, this pushy behavior left a bad taste in our mouths. We ended up leaving and driving 11 miles to the Irvine location, where we received excellent service. No questions were asked, and the process of returning the iPhone and switching back to her old phone took only 20 minutes.

It’s sad that instead of getting good service just 2 miles away, we had to go 11 miles out of our way. People don't want to work with pushy salespeople who try to lock them into something they don't like. Thankfully, there are other Verizon locations where the staff have the customer’s best interest in mind, but sadly, the Lake Forest location is not...

I've never been in a store with every single employee so unwilling to help anyone, until I visited this Verizon location.

My husband and I went into the verizon store to check out the new Galaxy S5, which had come out that day. The store had about 8 customers and two verizon employees. A man named Guillermo took our names and informed us that it would be about half an hour wait to be helped.

We went over to the S5s. One of them was completely dead despite being plugged in. It would not power on. The other phone was completely locked, with only emergency and the camera as options. Surely there were other people that would want to check out the hot new phone right?

I asked Guillermo how to unlock it. Despite just standing there with his ipad doing nothing, he responded "We will help you when it is your turn." I responded that I just wanted to see the phone while I waited. He dismissively responded just to slide my phone on the screen. When I explained to him it was locked, he just ignored me. I pressed that it should only take a second for them to unlock it and he just told me to wait my turn.

After this, another customer complained to Guillermo that others had been helped before his wife. He was rude to the customer, saying "What do you want me to do?" and snickered when the man told Guillermo he would complain to corporate.

I tried to get the other verizon employee to unlock it, who was standing in front of the S5, while her customer was calling relatives to retrieve passwords. She insinuated that I tried to "jump the line" and that I would only get helped when it was my turn. I still don't understand why either employee couldn't take the half a second to either unlock the phone, or simply explain that they didn't know how to and would need to look it up.

Insane... two verizon employees (Guillermo informed the customer who had complained that there were three employees but one was on lunch break) just standing around not being a help to anyone. Ludicrous that the day the S5 comes out there are two on display and I can't even see the home screen. I can't imagine going into an apple store and not being allowed to play with...