shocking Best Buy report. It was pleasant...
Went to buy an iPhone for my daughter, and I was surprised by the experience. My previous iPhone purchase was at a Radio Shack, and it was horrible. It was like being trapped with a used car salesman (no offense). At every turn I was pressured for upgrades... Radio Shack protection packages, screen cover, cases, car charger, etc. etc. etc. It wasn't just the endless questioning, it was the manner, and then the rude disparaging grunts of disapproval and warnings of dire things that can happen without "x".
I saw the BB $25 gift card offer, and so we headed there. We had an intelligent, well-Apple-versed sales rep, that shocked me. It wasn't just me either, the previous person in line had remarked how painless his experience was too. I asked about the gift card, she said the offer was valid.
I asked about the activation fee and she said she thought Verizon charged that on the next bill. I pulled out a print-out from the BB website (
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Mobile/...ss/pcmcat209600050008.c?id=pcmcat209600050008), that says that BB will pick up the charges (which ranges from $25-35).
She thought the Share Everything plan would be actually $10 cheaper, or the same each month, but worked it out both ways. The old plan actually worked out to be a better deal and offered us a total of 6GB of data between 3 phones as opposed to 4gb, and was $10 cheaper.
I had backed up the old phone's contact list using the Verizon Backup asst, but had read it wouldn't work for a iPhone. She said there was an iPhone app which would pull the data (free), and then installed the app and updated the contact list.
She did a number of other things too, turned off the Stock Quote app updates, set up email, etc. I have had assistance with some of these these things for our other phones, but this was painless. Frankly, the Verizon store help had little clue how to work with the iPhones (or just made more money pushing other devices). So... when our next update comes up in 6 months, I would definitely go back again.
PS: on the activation fee, I know that V changed their policy, and started charging the bogus fees on "new every two's" in Oct 2011, Best Buy apparently is eating the charge. Guess I will find out for sure when the next bill comes...
