Did Verizon really just get rid of the only reason people stuck around?
How hard is it to understand that? Apparently, quite a bit, seeing how Verizon 's CEO — Hans Vestberg — just said that the company will only be prioritizing 'high-quality' customers from now on.
Some areas have reported empty Verizon stores. | Image credit — Verizon
America's largest carrier is losing customers at an incredible rate, with most people moving to T-Mobile or an MVNO. And, honestly, can you blame them? Over the years, there has been a sharp uptick in people complaining about how Verizon operates. From poor coverage, bad customer service, and even worse pricing, people are fed up. Of course, wherever Verizon works, it works great, but the numbers don't lie. While T-Mobile is skyrocketing in popularity, and AT&T is also recording growth, Verizon continues to see people walking out the door.This led to the company employing a brilliant strategy to retain its user base.
For quite a while now, Verizon has been throwing out discounts with reckless abandon. Granted, the company took a very uncoordinated approach, leading to Verizon's pricing crisis. Many customers were still seeing price hikes at random, but many others suddenly started being gifted one discount after another.There were many tricks to land these discounts as well. Even just hinting to a customer support representative that you were planning to switch carriers ended with you mysteriously receiving a discount. This was, quite clearly, Verizon 's emergency plan for customer retention.
But, perhaps best of all, the carrier would randomly award its users with what it called loyalty discounts. If you had been a Verizon user for a while, you'd get a discount that could range anywhere from $10 to $50 or higher. This was another tactic that the company began employing to stop its subscriber count from falling off of a cliff. And…then it stopped.
Customers received emails similar to this. | Image credit — Reddit
Users who were enjoying loyalty discounts are now getting emails from Verizon telling them that said discounts are no longer valid. Of course, the carrier didn't waste this opportunity to promote its myPlan options, something that many users have been actively resisting.
And I am confused, very confused. I cannot count the number of times that I have seen a Verizon user admit that the only reason that they're sticking around is for the discounts. Many customers have claimed that they very much dislike the company's services and customer support, but that their plans are too cheap to give up.
Verizon , what are you doing? What do you gain by doing this? Do you really believe that customers will keep using your services if they cost the same or more than other carriers that, in most people's eyes, are better?
CEO Hans Vestberg says that Verizon will now prioritize profitability over growing its customer base, but do you really have as big of a market share to keep turning a profit? Do you honestly think that you can keep people around when you have nothing to offer over your competitors?
I am so baffled. Seeing someone genuinely praise Verizon over T-Mobile or AT&T is like seeing a unicorn. And, for some inexplicable reason, the company has bet its entire future on those unicorns.
Well, at least now we know that if Verizon dies in the future, we can point back to a specific time in history where it all went wrong, because I do not think that Verizon is too big to fail. And as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
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