... at a place which, prior to me, had 0 customer reviews on Google.

It's very silly, but Google Maps rates me in the top 1% of their guides & apparently prioritizes showing people my reviews.

so they are now stuck with 1 star for their storefront.

(I am deeply annoyed at this place, & they had the misfortune to be the first people to annoy me since Tuesday who do not have Constitutional protection details)

Normally I don't engage in petty revenge. but normally businesses don't try to scam me with hundreds of dollars of hidden fees & price markups, then be very incompetent at canceling my transactions.

holy jeez

yeah hundreds of dollars is definitely worth it

what happened??

a Verizon outlet - a contractor, not technically Verizon itself but allowed to use their name & branding - told me I was eligible for a free phone upgrade through Verizon (which I am)

only AFTER they had handed me the phone and started the transfer process

did they start to stack up service fees of multiple kinds

and claim that each of the basic peripherals cost baseline $60-80 each, for another $300+ (they couldn't even quote a specific amount) for one cord, one brick, one case, one screen protector, all of the cheapest possible vatiety

now like

the amount of money they were asking me to spend was not unreasonable for a phone upgrade

but they were SO OBVIOUSLY trying to steamroll me with the fees

& charging 3-4× the market value of each peripheral

like, I own a charging cable that can literally be used to tow a truck

& it cost me $19

3 screen protectors? $15

I own the HIGHER-QUALITY same-brand version of the case they offered me... which cost $45, not $80

and then it took them half an hour to cancel the transaction...

because...

they couldn't get their phone system to work to place some automated service calls

so I was, uh, out. out of patience, out of temper.

but Google now rates them 1.0

oh fuck that predatory bullshit

right?

their salesperson was also plainly unprepared for me to just flatly decline the sale

I felt a little bad because like. not her fault, she gotta make money.

but her bosses suck.

(I was not a hostile, aggro dude, I was just like "no, cancel the entire transaction")

but now they are 1.0 at Google.

wow fuck that guy