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I’m fortunate in that I’m able to get Verizon’s FiOS service where I live. I’ve had it for a little over six months now, and it has been absolutely amazing. I have a 20Mbit symmetric connection, and it’s been basically rock solid. The one time prior to this weekend that the service dropped out, I called their tech support and actually had a good experience. The tech guy I got on the phone was knowledgeable, didn’t ask me to do a bunch of retarded things to test my connection, was able to tell that my service wasn’t working, and got it fixed by the end of the reasonably short call.
Until this weekend, I’ve been exceptionally happy with FiOS.
This past Friday, my awesome roommate wanted to add the baseball package to our cable so she could get the Yankees / Red Sox game at home. The billing on the account was a little weird, so I decided to go ahead and try and fix that when I called in. The deal was that the woman who owns my house had to call in initially to request the installation since it requires doing work on the house itself a bit, but she had me call in after that and put my credit card on the account so I would get billed. It’s all been working fine, but the Verizon people when we initially signed up had said that sooner or later I should call in and get the name and number on the account switched over to me, so that it would be consistent. This is what I attempted. When I called in, I was trying to accomplish two things.
- Add the baseball package to my account.
- Switch the name and phone number on the account to be mine.
Unfortunately, I got connected to one of the most incompetent people I’ve ever spoken to. Sparing the excruciatingly annoying details, I was on the phone for about an hour. At the end of the hour, we did NOT have the baseball package, and my internet connection had stopped working. For the record, at no point was I ever told that there was even a possibility of any services going down. The guy claimed that the name and number had been switched to mine, and that my internet connection would start working again the next day (Saturday) when their systems finished processing everything.
When 24 hours had passed and my internet was still down, I called Verizon tech support (who were on the ball and helpful). They told me that they saw the deactivation order for my account, but that there was nothing in there saying to reactivate it, and that only billing could put in such a reactivation order. Back to billing, where I got a more on-the-ball rep.
I explained the situation to on-the-ball seeming rep, and he went to talk to a supervisor. When he came back, he said “Listen man, I’m going to be really honest with you right now, and it’s not good news.”
Sigh…
He told me that the following was currently “the state of things”.
- My name and number were not on the account.
- The baseball package was not added to my cable.
- My internet connection was down.
- I’d been charged a $99 early deactivation fee for the internet going down.
- The only entity who could turn the internet back on was a local office.
- Nobody was going to be at the local office until Monday.
Being fair, on-the-ball billing rep was very apologetic about things, told me exactly what number to call tomorrow and what to say, and so on. But he couldn’t turn my service back on. Somehow at Verizon the billing people can easily initiate termination of the internet services, but they are not able to reinstate internet services. I’m typing this from my 3g card on my laptop, but I can’t honestly do any real work like this. So the consequence is that I didn’t get any of the work related stuff I wanted to get done this weekend finished.
I realize it’s unfair to characterize an entire company because of one (extremely) crappy experience with a support person. And I’m not going to do that here. I’m honestly hoping that I can call this local office number tomorrow, they can push a few buttons, and things will start working again. I still have name resolution and ICMP working, so I know that the hardware is all still ready to go. All the same, this is a FAIL. The fact that an unqualified front line support person can so easily screw up my services, but other front line people who are properly qualified cannot fix the services, is a situation I regard as a problem.
I can’t wait for my FiOS to be turned back on, but I’ll be damn sure to be abnormally cautious if I ever have to deal with their billing department again. If billing has the ability to break something they have no corresponding ability to fix quickly, I’m going to tread very carefully.
Update:
I called in this morning as directed, and Verizon was able to get my internet service restored fairly quickly. Everybody I’ve talked to there subsequent to the idiot I got on Friday has really been quite good. Wish I’d gotten any of them the first time around.
I’m glad we’re not the only ones suffering from lame ISPs. If you’re roommate is a Yankees’ fan than her weekend truly sucked.
CHL – Thanks for this blog. We have had Verizon service in husband’s name for 25 years. In 05, we separated. I kept number and changed it to my name. At the same time, I switched to FIOS. Love the service. Now, husband moving back in. We want to change the service back to his name so his name will show on caller id for business calls he makes.
One Verizon billing person told me, no problem, but I had to give permission for and then husband has to call in and accept responsibility. Ok/
Husband calls – In Verizon epic fail mode – we are being told that we must cancel the current phone/internet/tv account. Be without service for 48 hours. And then have new service in his name. No guarantee that we will keep the same number!!!! And yes a fee for early termination!!!!
You are indeed fortunate, FiOS is amazingly fast..including the HDTV of course.
I have spent days researching the fios internet package and the cable provider and satellite company bundles. Is there a person out there believe that cable could possibly be better than Verizon Fios internet? It would appear that there is no way to compare when talking about speed of the network and funtionlality for managing your viewing.
Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with a few pics to drive the message home a little bit, but instead of that, this is great blog. A fantastic read. I’ll definitely be back.