Donate a Phone

Verizon Wireless

Total Hold Time: 1 minute

Transfer/IVR Layers: 2

CSR: Thank you for calling Verizon Wireless. May I have your name please?

WR: Name given.

CSR: Hello (Name), would you verify your mobile number for me?

WR: Number given.

CSR: Thank you. How can I help you today?

WR: I have four old phones at home. My resolution for 2002 is to clean up lose ends and this is one of them. I recall reading about carriers taking donated phones and supplying them to certain charities. Can you tell me which charities those are and where I can take these phones?

CSR: Let me see what I can find out. Can you hold please?

Hold Time: 5 minutes.

CSR: Hello. Yes, you can contact your police department and they can give you a list. Or the battered women's shelter. You can donate them there also.

WR: OK. But I can't bring them in to you?

CSR: No, uh-uh. You contact them.

WR: Yes, but I thought the carrier would be the one who would recondition them before sending them out to any organization. So do the organizations have to do that?

CSR: I believe they contact us or contact someone who takes care of that for them. No, we don't take them back. We suggest that you just donate them. The women's battered shelter is one of them I know of. Someone just told me that the police department could give you a lot of information too.

WR: Thank you.

CSR: Anything else I can help you with today.

WR: I don't think so.

CSR: Thank you for calling Verizon Wireless. We appreciate your business.

Qwest Wireless

Total Hold Time: 2 minute

Transfer/IVR Layers: 3

CSR: Thank you for calling Qwest Wireless. This is (name). May I start by verifying your wireless phone number as well as your name.

WR: Both provided.

CSR: Just give me a moment, and I will open your account.

WR: I have five old phones because I have changed carriers and phones over the last 10 years. Don't you have a program where I can donate the phones so they can be used for needy organizations?

CSR: Sure. OK. If I understand correctly, you basically want to donate your old phones and you want to know how to do it.

WR: Right.

CSR: Yes, I can definitely help you with that. What we basically suggest is if you want to take it down, a lot of women's shelters will accept phones, and I'm pretty sure they are the only ones … that I know of anyway that are accepting phones right now.

What they do, because wireless phones can be used for 911, all the time, they give it to people and they can use 911 on it.

WR: Now, the last two phones were last used with my current cell phone number. Do I have to worry about those calls being billed to my current phone and account?

CSR: No. No. Once you cancel your service, the phone is only usable for 911. Each phone has a number that is recognized through the market and the system just takes that number and deactivates that one.

WR: OK, so if I just take these phones over to a women's shelter, they'll know what to do with them?

CSR: Yes. Exactly.

WR: Great. That's all I needed.

CSR: Thanks for calling.

Mystery Caller is Wireless Review's ongoing series of random calls to carriers to determine how a customer might be treated and the accuracy of distributed information.