My birthday was a couple of weeks ago. Guess what I wanted for my birthday? A Verizon Nexus One. The timing seemed perfect, too, since the Nexus One on Verizon was rumored to be coming March 23rd. To my disappointment and that of thousands of others, the rumor wasn’t true.
Like so many other people, on March 23rd, I excitedly watched the web news and my Twitter feed for the announcement. It never came, and people’s excitement turned slowly to irritation, frustration, and outright anger as the day wore on.
Since then, just like thousands of other people, I’ve been watching and waiting for word from Verizon. There are plenty of new rumors. Worse yet, there are plenty of spammers preying on our eagnerness. They’ve set up ugly blogs chockful of ads, and flooded Twitter and the web with “news” about the Verizon Nexus One.
The one thing you don’t see is any official word from Verizon. Nothing on their site. If you go Verizon and enter “Nexus One” in the Search box, they actually redirect you to the Google site!
I’ve searched on Bing and Google for official word from Verizon on Nexus One, and found nothing. I’ve also tweeted @vzwoffers asking “So, what’s the word on the Nexus One and a ship date?” Nothing. No response.
I understand that Verizon might not want to give a ship date. Maybe they can’t give one because they don’t know exactly when the phone will be in the store. But they could provide some information. Some announcement. Some tidbit to those of us eagerly awaiting their new product.
I’ve dropped by two Verizon brick-and-mortar stores. The first time, I stopped in to ask if they had any word on a date. This was late in the week of the reputed announcement. The guy had no information, but he did say I was about the twelfth person who had come to the store asking that day.
This past Tuesday eventing, I had some time to kill. So I went to a nearby Verizon store. I waited twenty minutes until a representative was free. Then I asked him, “I assume you don’t have any word on a date for the Nexus One. But do you know how we’ll order it when it comes in? Do we order it on the Google site and then wait for it to be shipped? Can we order it in your store from Google? Can we pick it up in the nearest store if we order it online?”
He didn’t have any information. He said they didn’t know anything about how ordering would work. Though he did know that right now you could only order through Google and only on T-Mobile–he actually plugged his competition!
Either Verizon management has chosen to pass no information on to their store staff, or the staff has been told not to say anything. In either case, I think it’s a lousy way to handle the situation. Verizon has effectively taken all the goodwill and excitement that built up prior to the expected March 23rd announcement and wasted it. At best, the enthusiasm of people like me has dissipated, like air out of a balloon. At worst, they’ve generated active dislike. I check the Twitter stream daily for info on the Nexus One, and I’ve seen the tone of the tweets. I’m not the only one ticked off.
A quick check of two sentiment tools suggests the same:
I’ll bet in the two weeks before March 23rd, there was a lot of green in that chart, a lot of positive sentiment.
I still intend to buy a Nexus One, and I’ll stick with Verizon. We’ve tried T-Mobile and AT&T. Neither gave us as good reception or customer service. (Though, I find the Verizon in-store experience annoying. I always have to put my name on a list and wait at least fifteen minutes for a representative. I might as well be in an Apple store.)
Still, Verizon’s really squandered an opportunity here. They would have been better off meeting the rumor head-on with some kind of announcement. “We’re sorry to disappoint so many customers. We never confirmed these rumors and can’t confirm any dates, now. Etc.” They would have done better to give their in-store representatives at least some information to pass on to customers, at least about what to expect and how purchases will work.
They’ve mishandled this release. I’m hoping that Verizon at least has their act together for the purchase part of this release. But given how badly they’ve handled the run-up, I’m worried they’ll be out of stock, confused, or under-staffed.
Regardless, they aren’t going to get the kinds of customers they could have gotten. Instead of flocks of excited buyers lined up at their stores, ala the release of Apple’s iPad, they’re going to have a lot of disgruntled buyers, making their purchase grumbling “finally” under their breath. Maybe Verizon doesn’t care, as long as we buy. But they should.
Neicole Crepeau is a tech industry veteran of 27 years, and has worked in marketing, design, and technical writing. She tweets and blogs about social media, web technology, and user experience under @neicolec and Coherent Social Media. She does social media consulting and user experience design at Coherent Interactive.
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