Ask me about Verizon FIOS. I dare ya.
A former Verizon employee gave me a red T-shirt which declares, in bold black type, “Ask me about Verizon FIOS.”
Go ahead, ask me.
We’ve had three DVRs now. The first one died of “ever faster reboots” — it started rebooting itself more and more often to the point where you couldn’t use it for more than five minutes. The second one’s hard drive crashed, but after three 20-minute phone calls, it turned out that Verizon’s automated repair notification system didn’t work with hard drive crashes. The system demanded we go through a 20-minute diagnostic after which it said we could call back if it didn’t work, and it would know where we were.
Except it didn’t.
We also had two routers. For a long time, the router crashed routinely. Then it turned out it only does that if you use its built in Internet filters, one of the things they advertise. Well, now we use OpenDNS to filter instead.
Verizon’s a funny phone company. They were formed out of New York -New England Telephone (the horrid NYNEX) and New Jersey Bell. NYNEX was awful; New Jersey Bell was a paragon of virtue. You can guess which company won out in the end.
Now, when you get FIOS, they want to take out your old copper wire. That’s because the copper wires are regulated (especially in New Jersey) and FIOS is, for the most part, not. If you have traditional phone service, they have strong unions which (in this case, at least) assure good service because they can’t just sub stuff out to sweatshops in Asia; and if anything goes wrong, you call the Board of Public Utilities, and you get it fixed within a day. Oh, and an apology. (That works in New Jersey. The last time I checked, in New York, you can call and NYNEX will pretend to fix the problem. And you can keep that up every week for months.)
Don’t ever let them take out your copper wire.
In my case, I wanted to take advantage of a bundle offer, so I called them and they said, “Sure!” Cablevision’s been making inroads, and they want to keep me as a valued if somewhat abused customer. So I got the bundle discount. The only problem is, the bundle comes with Verizon’s somewhat flawed answering service. I have my own service which e-mails me audio files when people leave a message. They agreed to leave my system in place.
Of course, they didn’t. When my phone was busy, Verizon took a message. I didn’t have access to the messages. Never mind.
I called. After 20 minutes or so, the operator insisted they’d never had a “busy-call forwarding” service. Didn’t matter that it was on my bills for years. Finally I read it off the bill for a third time and she said, “Oh, THAT busy-call forwarding!” or some such and said she’d install it.
A week or two later, I realized it wasn’t being used, and tried again. The operator immediately found it and said she’d enabled it.
You can repeat that a few times.
Now, one of the annoying things about Verizon is that, despite being the phone company, which pushes Caller ID, they don’t seem to have Caller ID. So when you call you have to enter your phone number, and later they ask you for it. Interesting software they have.
Also, of course, you need to do a whole bunch of button pushing and listening to recorded messages to get to the right person, who often isn’t the right person anyway.
Don’t get me started on their convoluted, slow, buggy web site, filled with missing links, inexplicable delays and stalls, and moving targets.
Somewhere along the way, incidentally, they started charging me for three call forward-busy services. I have two phone lines. See a problem with that?
Cutting the story short, I wrote a letter. I got a message back from one of their escalation specialists. I tried calling back. Ha ha, for escalation they have you call an answering machine, so they can try to call you back a few days later when you’re not home. Because one thing you want to do with customers angry enough to write is to be even slower to respond.
They claimed to fix the problem. They didn’t. I spoke to the escalation person. Still no fix. Now, instead of a busy signal or Verizon’s answering system, callers got the three-tone sound and “You now have to dial 1 and the area code before dialing this number.” (We don’t really dial any more, but that’s besides the point.)
The irony was not lost on me.
Another letter and a couple more phone calls got me to someone who claimed that Verizon no longer allows you to forward calls to a third-party messaging service.
So I asked them to shut off the service completely. Sure, people will get a busy signal now and then, but at least they won’t think I’ve disconnected my phone, and they won’t think I’m ignoring them.
Go ahead, ask me about Verizon FIOS. I wear the T-shirt frequently now. People ask me about FIOS and I tell them. It takes a while, but I tell them. And a lot of Verizon customers nod their head and say, “That sounds like what I went through.”
Scott Adams said cable companies were staffed by the people who weren’t good enough to make the cut for the phone company. That may be true, but it seems hard to believe they can be any worse. (Though I hear Comcast tries.) In any case, Cablevision offered to buy out my Verizon contract – and when I move, that’s exactly what we’re they’ll do.
Unusual stuff to my knowledge. Up the road from me is Keller, TX, the test site for Verizon FIOS. Those people around the Dallas Metroplex, in huge numbers, praise Verizon FIOS.
“Internet speeds to kill for”, and “flawless reliability.” Maybe good things aren’t so good elsewhere.
We have it here in Maryland. I’ve had a few tussles with Verizon over the years. This is a big, slow-witted company and they hire those sorts for everything. I’ve suffered through Comcast so I have some perspective. At the moment they’re giving Comcast a run for their money. In a few years, after they have most of the incumbent cable companies on the ropes, they’ll raise prices to the moon until Congress starts to threaten them (sort of…).
No love lost here for any of our wonderful monopolies that are politically protected and overwhelmingly underperformers of the worst sort. Somebody has to ask if Capitalism is supposed to protect competition then why is there so little political support for it?
Grande Communications is the overbuilder in Waco, TX. Since Grande showed up a few years ago, incumbent Time Warner has made massive improvements.
Waco now has two Grade A cable systems. I use TW, but it’s good to know there’s a very good competitor in the back yard.
I HATE VERIZON! When it was New England Telephone here, they had a pretty solid reputation. When they merged and became NYNEX, it seemed that all “best practices” were thrown to the curb along with quality, reliability, and customer service. That’s the same mediocrity they’ve strived for under the Verizon name.
One of the best days of my life was when I finally was able to terminate my relationship with Verizon….hopefully permanently. When my local cable company, Charter Communications, started offering phone service, the decision to escape my abusive and tortured relationship with Verizon was an easy one. I had long before switched to Charter for my Internet services. The day we installed our new IP telephony solution from Charter, we immediately noticed a dramatic, and I mean DRAMATIC improvement in sound quality.
The other thing I hated about Verizon was all the games they played with billing. You’d sign up for one of their “packages” for a fixed price and a few months later the bill would be creeping up because, without notice, the package just went up a few bucks, along with the taxes, and there’s some other miscellaneous charges that no one at Verizon can seem to explain or understand. We experienced the same thing with our Verizon cell phone package. All lies, games, and scams as far as I can tell. Once Cingluar/AT&T improved their cell coverage area, we switched and never looked back. Why is it that Cingular/AT&T and Charter Communications have been able to keep my bill right for over 3 years running now, but Verizon couldn’t go for a 3 or 4 month stretch without screwing me somehow? Now I don’t have to spend and hour a month on the phone trying to get a bill ocrrected or wait for some justification as to why I should be paying more.
They’re advertising the heck out of FIOS here, but they’ll never get me to switch. I’m completely satisfied with my current HDTV service, IP phones, and a 10mbps Internet connection that I can’t seem to saturate with 4 computers running simultaneously over it.
Not only is Verizon’s consumer business sad, so is the B2B side of their business. I had one of my customers co-locate their data center at a Verizon facility thinking it would be cheaper than spending millions on a new data center in their own building. It was cheaper…on paper….but the reliability was terrible. After one year of pain, they decided to move everything back into their own facility. Verizon couldn’t respond to requests fast enough to add or reconfigure the network to accomodate changes. Verison wanted a 3 week lead time. Growing businesses are too dynamic to wait that long. Especially when the change is a simple reconiguration of a router that should take less than a 1/2 hour. The cost of downtime from service interruptions they experienced was more than they could swallow.
The best thing that could happen to Verizon is for them to go out of business. All of their former employees should be prevented from getting a job with any other telecommunications company so they can’t spread their poisonous attitude, culture and incompetence. No other company deserves to be infected by anything Verizon. Maybe a job emptying the trash at the DMV would be a good fit.
I have Verizon Wireless in the Detroit area.
Verizon rocks. They’re the best.
I never said ANYTHING about Wireless. Their coverage is known to be excellent. Of course if you ever have a problem…
Dave, Verizon wireless does have good coverage in my area, but their business practices are terrible. That alone is enough for me to stay away from them.