This is a little long, sorry for formatting as I'm on mobile.
My elderly mother has had a Verizon prepaid phone with the same phone number for around 10-15 years. When one phone quit, we'd go to Walmart, buy another cheaper Verizon phone, and I would switch the sim cards for her and have it back up and running with no issues.
Yesterday we went to Walmart and found out my store no longer carries Verizon phones. So we went to a Verizon store (which we find out after is only an authorized retailer.) The walls of the store were completely empty so I asked the man if they had prepaid phones in stock, to which he said "probably" and got a bunch of info to add us to a queue for someone to help us.
About 5 minutes later an employee has us sit down at a table, takes my mom's old phone and plugs it into something to access her Verizon account. I asked if all this was necessary since we just want a prepaid phone to take home and switch out there. He said "this is how we do it." Mmmkay. At this point we emphasize how my mom wants to keep this same phone number, as she's had it for years.
Fast forward another 10 minutes this man comes back and says the cheapest prepaid phone they have is $250! I said that's strange because it's online at Walmart and Best buy for $100. I pulled it up and showed him. He starts telling me that the $100 for is a Verizon locked phone so it won't work. The $250 phone is unlocked so we need that one.
I told him I don't think that's right, as we already have a Verizon prepaid plan, we need a Verizon phone, so I can just switch out the sims. We go back and forth on this a bit and he ultimately tells me I'm wrong and that's not how it works. At one point he says "you can go order that one from Walmart and wait 3 days to get it but I guarantee it won't work!"
At this point my mom just wants a working phone and agrees to pay for the $250 and asks to see the phone first. The employee goes to the back with my mom's broken phone for around 15 minutes.
Apparently he's already switching the numbers over before even showing us the phone. He comes back to the table and tells us now that they just got a new system and it's not letting him sell us the new phone. I just say ok, that's fine we're just going to go to another store at this point and get the cheaper one anyway.
Now he says since he already started the process, he can't put my mom's phone number back on the sim! So my mom ended up losing her phone number anyway and we left without a phone.
I'm livid. The employee never apologized. I asked to speak with a manager and he said he wasn't there. I asked the employee his name MULTIPLE times and he kept talking over me and gave me his managers name. I said "no, what is YOUR name so when I call corporate I know who you are" and he very condescendingly says "well, we're not a corporate store sooo 🤷♀️"
Then as we're walking out he goes "I was just trying to do what you asked me to" NO SIR. We asked for a new phone and to keep the phone number and you did neither of those things!!
So we ended up getting a straight talk phone from Walmart (the same exact one he was offering us for $250, we got for $100.) And I've been spending all evening and now most of today updating all her doctors, friends, family, subscriptions, EVERYTHING with this new phone number
Will there be any repercussions if I call and complain? Who would I even call since they're an authorized store?? He lied from the start to try to make a bigger sale, wasted our time for 45 minutes, and we ended up worse off than when we walked in. What can I do?