Miserable retail

The other day we had a harrowing experience at a Verizon Wireless store.  Along with one of the business owners, I went to upgrade some phones to the new Motorola Q.  On a previous visit, one of the salespersons had told us we could change one of the phones for the advertised price of $99.

These are the problems that we encountered at the Verizon Wireless store:
1) Ben, the individual helping us, did not stand up straight at all.  Not only that, he didn't know what the hell he was doing and constantly had to ask some other guy for help.
2) "New Hire" was in training to learn and was standing around not doing anything.  Ben was training him.
3) The most senior individual there who Ben kept asking for help ended up losing a sale because he couldn't deal with his own customer.  He was really pissed, went in the back room, and screamed.
4) They would not upgrade our phones for the advertised price.  Here we were, willing to spend money and upgrade our monthly plan (considerably, I might ad, VZW ain't cheap!), and they wouldn't do it.
5) They informed us that we would be totally out of contract in a few months, and we could renew then.

In short, they were completely inept, wouldn't take our money that we wanted to spend, couldn't find a way to sell us the phones we wanted, and told us how to get out of our contract.  This is a retailer doing it all wrong.  One of my favorite sites, Brand Autopsy, today asks the most important question about a retailer: Would you miss them if they were gone?  In Verizon's case, no.  I'd get someone else.  

In a crowded marketplace such as cellular phones it is vital to stand out from the crowd.  Technology is giving everyone a strong network and everyone great, cool phones.  As soon as customer service starts to go, you've really got something to worry about.