LG Lucid, the L stands for lemon

Have you ever noticed how in general, customer service just stinks these days? Let me introduce you to my own version of Verizon hell.

The story starts when I dropped my original droid April 2, shattering the glass. My fault. I would have continued to use the darned thing but didn't want to get cut so I took a trip to the local Verizon store. I was looking for a reliable phone with a small footprint and the lady at the Via Rancho Escondido location told me that I would be better off with the new LG Lucid than the iphone 4s I had been contemplating purchasing.

This was a new model that I believe had been released the last week of March and I was sold. Small package and 4g to boot. A very nice man there named Oscar helped me synch all my contacts and get me rolling. Unfortunately within five minutes of plugging it in to the car the battery got exceedingly hot and a message flashed that due to excessive heat it was entering shutdown mode. A half an hour later I returned the phone which Oscar deemed defective. Not an auspicious start but hey, things happen.

I get a new LG Lucid and it seems okay. I notice a few sniggling little problems. Bad microphone, terrible audibility and less signal reception than even my old dinosaur, the original droid. That's okay, I will deal. I also notice that battery life quickly becomes nonexistent, even worse than the old motorola. You get two weeks to return the phone on the locked in contract and I gave it serious consideration but didn't.

Four days later the second phone goes down with its own battery/port problems. Can't be fixed. I asked them to change me out to the iphone 4s, after all this is two failures in 19 days. No can do, they tell me.

"Why didn't you bring it back four days ago?" the girl asked.

"Uh, because it broke yesterday."

My attempts at logical discourse failed to fire. The fact that they were selling a defective instrument that had broken down twice in less than three weeks didn't fire the faintest cognitive spark in their noggins. Can't trade you out, we will mail you yet another one soon. Great. You would think that they might consider actully testing these instruments before rushing them to market but what do I know?

I bit my lip at their attitude and asked to speak to a superior or at least to get an email address so that I could write a letter to a person at an executive level to tell them what I thought about the quality of their technology. Sorry sir, not feasible, call customer service and try to get the manager of a manager of a manager of a manager. This is Google style customer service and unfortunately the way that things are going these days. Either get on a chat board and have other incompetent people equally if not dumber than myself try to solve a technological problem or talk to some tech brahmin in New Delhi that you can't understand.

I get an email from Verizon that my phone could be picked up this week from Escondido. I returned from San Francisco monday night and drove down to the store today. And it was shackled. The store had been closed down, no forwarding address. Went out for a pack of smokes and never came back.

There was a sign for a San Marcos location. I called the number. "You got my phone?" They said no, it probably went to Carmel Valley. I was really getting steamed by this point and called the customer service number and vented and received the evaluation survey when I was not exactly in the best of moods.

I got a representative on the phone and let them have it. No credibility or accountability either for that matter. And no crappy phone replacement either. Might be in the vacated store's mailbox, they would try to get me another one next week.

Now I had driven forty minutes each way in traffic from Fallbrook, losing gas money and time. Why couldn't they have just sent an email saying hey, the store is now closed down. I was told that was an automated message, humans don't get involved in such common courtesies. Glad I didn't drive to San Marcos or Carmel Valley. Guy said that there was no chance that I could change to an iphone, apple wouldn't let them. I am pretty much stuck with a phone that breaks down and dies, at least for the next two years or until I get fed up enough to pony up the gelt needed to change to a competitor.

You might remember my last Verizon rant, the one where they put insurance payments on my phone without telling me, charges that I had specifically declined. They would only refund three months of my overcharges, said I should have read my bill better. I started wondering if Verizon was a con man operation. Fellow in Carlsbad gave me a third line upgrade and without my knowledge or complicity said I was a veteran and now I can't get my deceased mother's line off my bill.

I could and would go to ATT but I would be hit with a whopper of early termination fees and equipment charges. So they have me right where they want me, delivering crappy technology that repeatedly breaks down, larcenously overcharging me for services that I sufficiently declined and not having the decency to let me even know that they had moved.

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I can't do much. I am only one guy. They obviously could care less about the quality of their products and service. But I can tell all of you who have even given a glimmer of thought to buying an LG Lucid not to do it. Save yourself the trouble. It is a piece of crap. The battery will overheat and fail. And Verizon will do nothing about it. Can't wait to get phone number three. Anybody want to take the over on how long it lasts?

I would love to get some responses with your own Verizon and LG horror stories. I know that you must have quite a few of your own.

Bad phone, caveat emptor!