Loyalty Ain't All It's Cracked Up To Be or Fie On FIOS! It Doesn't Pay to Stay!

I know this is a rant and rants really don't belong here, but the truth needs to be spoken out loud, so I am mouthing each word as I key them. My Lenny Bruce side is taking control....

Being rewarded for loyalty is DEAD. There, I've said it. It's hard to believe, but it is true.


Staying with a company for decades allows them to increase prices for the services you've been using as part of your daily life. The nickels and dimes eventually turn to dollars and then tens of dollars. And you keep paying, automatically direct from your bank account so you barely notice. Now, they might send you a little bonus like waiving a service charge if you're late on a payment or the bank shuts down the auto withdrawal for one reason or another or bundling a promotion that could save you a couple of bucks a month enabling them to keep the wool pulled over your eyes. They have you. They know they have you. You know they have you but you assume their benevolence will last. HORSEFEATHERS!

Gone are the days of the gold watch and severance package in appreciation for long years of service. Gone are the days of a loyal customer deservedly getting the best deal the entity with whom he has given his custom for decades has to offer.

Now, some idiot in marketing comes up with an idea designed to regain customer share stolen by competition. It is a killer promotion including Gigabit internet, Cable package including Showtime and Digital telephone service plus a $100 Visa card to help offset the installation charge. You sign on for 2 years at the astounding price of $78 plus tax per month. The caveat is NEW CUSTOMERS ONLY!

In sales, you learn not to crap where you eat. If I have a happy customer would I offer stupidly low discounts to their neighbor on the same block or neighborhood or street? Not if I want to keep them happy and remain in their good graces. Apparently, Verizon is so arrogant as to not care and blasted this "Promotion" across social and print media. They made a mistake when they sent it to me. I hit the roof.

I had just cut the FIOS cable and boosted my internet speed the week before this came out. I called right away and was treated to a delightful call center conversation in another country. The answer was you can't get there from here. I asked for a supervisor who very kindly said you can't have that promotion because you aren't a new customer. It may not have been raining in India but he sure heard the thunder here over the phone. But it was a waste of time.

Why is it theses giant companies wonder that they are bleeding customers? It appears to be their master plan to thin the herd. If they can replace me with someone new paying $79 per month for two years and then jack the crap out of the price they win! Meanwhile, I fume at the lack of appreciation given to those who remain loyal unwittingly paying their share and then some.

Hopefully, you're working for a company who appreciates you and will have something for you after 20 or 30 years of service. Hopefully, it won't fall to your fellow employees to have to chip in to send you off with loving care. I worry if someone will be there to do the same for them when their time comes to back away from the keypad or sales counter or waitress station or classroom or boiler room or tire machine or switchboard or ....
I was so honored by my sendoff that I will never forget it nor the folks that made it happen. Never heard from management, nor any of the former bosses I served loyally for over 20 years. I wasn't disappointed. I knew not to expect it.

Loyalty has value in work and life in general. It figures into managing our humanity. A government must be loyal to it's given principles. A citizen must be loyal to the same while providing oversight to those who have been handed their will to be governed. Breaches in that loyalty can bring governments and nations down. It can bring major corporations down as well.

Verizon. You can't disregard those that helped you become the semi-monopolistic giant you are today. I am not referring to the breakup or buy out of Bell Telephone or the merger and name change magic performed a couple of decades ago. I mean us little folk, who pay faithfully and even keep our landlines going in loving memory of simpler times (ahh, those lovely flesh colored rotary dial lumps of metal and plastic). We are the backbone of the industry. Without us...you won't even notice we are gone. Who am I fooling?
Loyalty is a thing of the past.

Suddenly I feel like hooking up my rabbit ears and seeing what's on The Honeymooners tonight. That Norton is a riot.
"Aaaand away we go!"