If you bought your phone full price there is no reason why they should do this, it is just lies and misinformation to keep your contract...I have heard giving a valid excuse such as "where I work gets terrible reception and I need to switch networks" might help. They are just giving you the run around. Pretty lame..
I worked in a call center at one point, it was independently owned, but the calls I was receiving were billing questions regarding VZ landline services. Part of the problem is that the reps receive minimal training necessary to start fielding calls, much of the time when they tell you that something can not be done, it really means that they have no idea how to do it, or do not have the authority to do it.
There is tremendous pressure on the reps to resolve every call they receive, in a very short time frame, and with minimal to no hold time (which is used to research questions they do not know the answer to already). The reps are also under sales quotas, their main reason for taking your call would seem to be to resolve your issue, but that is only half of it, they must also find a way to sell you something that you will not immediately deactivate. Their pay is based upon an hourly wage, but the commissions can pay much more than the hourly rate, especially for the reps that the company considers to be model employees.
Personally, I feel that replacing customer service representatives with customer sales representatives is a bad idea, and may be the reason for such high dissatisfaction with network operators in this country. I do not know how the customer support systems are set up elsewhere, so I do not have any concrete evidence, but to me it seems like a common sense issue.
The majority of my incoming calls were basically complaints that the bill was too much, and yet I was expected to sell them something else, and generally something more. Sure 49.99/mo for phone/net/TV sounds great, but by the time the bill is due it is suddenly 80+. Oh, you have had the service for more than three months, well now the 49.99 is actually 99.99, and the bill gets upwards of 130 by the time the bill is due. The pricing schemes need to stop, but who will stop them?
When I was calling them and started mentioning the FCC regulations, I was immediately transferred to a higher level representative. Even then, there are certain things that VZ does not want done, therefore no reps are ever trained in how to do those things.