I've been a homeowner for 43 years in a couple of different states. I honestly can't think of a singe time I did not have phone service, even in severe storms when power was out. Cell reception, OTOH, is very spotty.
I don't doubt your mother's problems, but she is a very tiny minority. I'm keeping my land line, and the DSL that is more reliable than my cable service.
Hi, Of course land line is reliable. It is the problem of Verizon. I have lived in this city since the spring of 1970. I don't recall any time our phone was down. Had couple power failures which lasted like couple minutes each time.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@rochester.rr.com writes: | On Aug 5, 2:44=A0pm, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: | > On Wed, 5 Aug 2009 11:13:19 -0700 (PDT), N8N | > wrote: | > Does she have POTS service or the new broadband deal? | | Dunno about him, but my folks have Verizon POTS service, and it goes | out about once a year. They call Verizon and they ALWAYS, without | fail, threaten my mother that if they find the problem inside the | house, that she will have to pay for the repairs. They don't inform, | they THREATEN.
Some years ago I was having an ongoing problem with a Verizon POTS line and always heard this same threat. After a few months I started responding that I would be happy to pay them *regardless* of where they found the problem if only they would fix it. They never sent anyone. (This problem had nothing to do with my inside wiring or even my local loop; it was a trunk issue and I suspect they knew it. Only when I went to the DPU was it finally fixed.)
Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com
Back in the BAD old days before COMPETITION when only one telephone company was 'allowed' to operate in any one territory and land lines were almost the only form of technology available land lines were the ONLY RELIABLE means of phoning. Nowadays there are so many alternatives and providers.
The one and only telephone company would 'apply' for rates to whatever was the state/provincial or national authority that had given itself the authority to REGULATE the phone system; but increases were not always granted. There was great pressure on the telephone companies as a result to provide reliable service throughout their total territories.
An example: Some 55 years ago a hand crank magneto/battery telephone on a multi party line in an outlying rural area, provided you could get one, cost $1.67 per month. That included replacement phone batteries (which lasted several years) and an annual telephone book listing numbers. The manual switchboard service from an agent operator in someone's home in the community was generally very good; in one case a community was so satisfied that it petitioned to NOT have it's agency service replaced by dial!
There were numerous MEASURERMENTS of the telephone system which included 'Speed of Service' (Dial tone), 'Speed of Answer' (Operator answer within ten seconds),'Held Orders' (Customers waiting for phone service, and the reason!), 'Outages' (Phone service disrupted/ interrupted for more than 24 hours, and reason.), also priority was given to 'Out of service' (Customers with broken service). And overtime would often be granted to work to restore service if there was anyone in a home sick/needing medical attention/disabled etc.). Some of these were sent regularly to the regulatory authority, which was often staffed by people familiar with the telephone industry and/ or familiar with the REGULATIONS under which the phone company operated.
People often complained about the MONOPOLY that the telephone company had and exercised. By the same token the telephone company and it's employees were extremely conscious that they 'Were the only game in town' and stories are legendary about how telephone line staff and telephone operators would perform to maintain and restore service or get emergency calls through.
These days it is very different; there are many companies competing for the customer's dollar and a much wider range of services available; many of which were, at least at first, considered more trivial and therefore less essential than POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Nowadays, texting, inter-net access even viewing movies via a cell phone is considered normal/essential. There are many varieties of cost packaging and companies spend a much greater amount of time on selling/marketing etc. in order to get a share of the market.
Myself and members of my family have worked under both systems. The older monopoly and the newer competitive one. The emphasis today is on the bottom line. And customers are much more liable to be told "Well if you will live in Little Bottom Cove 45 miles from downtown behind two hills that block TV and cell phone signals (especially if digital!) you can't expect the reliability and grade of service as in an urban area! When there are more homes in your area, etc. etc. one of the competing companies may find it is worth their while to service your area more completely"!
This of course still doesn't take the onus off the providing company to make reliable any service they are providing but the emphasis is definitely different than in days of yore. And since many of the alternatives depend on batteries (which have to recharged and/or electrcity supply, in the name of economy not every small electronic site has a backup generator, the newer-electronic technology modes are INHERENTLY less reliable than the two bits of copper wire connected to a switching unit (itself, these days, probably electronic!) in a telephone exchange with large 8 to 24 hour reserve batteries and quite possibly also a back-up automatic start generator.
We gets what we pay for. Eh?
VERIZON FIOS is NOT reliable took them 2 MONTHS to get a network tech to find a bad router at the central office which effected EVERY FIOS customer in our area.
geez I HAD to call every day for 3 weeks and esclate to the verizon presidents office. tried to cancel no sir we stand behind our crap servioce with a contract with 300 buck cancel fee, doesnt matter if your phone isnt reliable.......
note to verizon contract up in october, I am canceling them:)
the problem was finally fixed, but it shouldnt take 2 months when every 12th incoming call is all noise
Land lines *are* more reliable than cellular, and the signal quality is much higher.
There's the problem, right there!
=A0I'm
It just seems odd to me that she would be in a "minority" when I've had the same problem in two different states. so that's at least three states in my experience where you can't count on the phone co.
nate
Ed is referring to the idea of statistical sample size. Your observations (because there are so few) are just statistical noise at this point.
=A0I'm
Then I must be colossally unlucky, having moved at least once a year for a while and ALWAYS having problems with my POTS. (and usually getting rude, indifferent service to boot.)
I didn't bother having it turned on the last time I moved and I haven't yet missed it. Been there for almost three years now.
nate
It just seems odd to me that she would be in a "minority" when I've had the same problem in two different states. so that's at least three states in my experience where you can't count on the phone co.
nate
I don't think anyone has mentioned that, at least here, Verizon will allow you to continue to purchase the DSL service when you drop your land line phone service as long as you can bundle the billing with another service such as Verizon wireless. Thinking about doing that as we almost never use our land line phone, especially since all of our friends and family (some
2000 miles away) have Verizon wireless and the long distance is free. I have to pay Verizon $5 per month on my land line because I never use the long distance service on it and they won't let me drop that long distance service.Tom G
my land line works just fine. She can either bitch about it, or have it fixed. her choice.
s
How does she "have it fixed?" Calling Verizon, the state PUC, and her representative have not resulted in a functional phone line. Can you recommend someone?
nate
I have a web page that gets updated once a minute and Comcast was so bad that my logs were filling up every day with missed connections. I switched to DSL and I get less than one failed upload a week. Any kind of little storm had Comcast down a week or more. It really doesn't matter to me how much faster they are when they are up if they are down as much as they are.
I don't use telephone nor cell. No interruptions, I use email.
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, wonnnnderful spam! :-)
Nope, just keep calling everytime they don't fix it correctly. They'll eventually get tired of the calls and fix it properly. Call everyday.
s
There's a demarc box in the basement already.
When the phone goes out, they plug directly into the demarc box. STILL DEAD.
Tell Verizon that. They STILL THREATEN.
Oh but for the good old days of Ma Bell... At least when there was one big company, the government could regulate them and force them to provide a certain level of service. Now it's deregulated and these baby Bells have you over a barrel. There's no competition, no choice. Verizon owns ALL the wires in the ground in the area. You get phone from Verizon or you don't get a phone.
hey'll
I tried that:( every day for 3 WEEKLS:(
It didnt help had to call verizon presidents office TWICE, to get a network tech to fix a fios noisey router.
come october:) I am out of contract and going to be a PIA.
they richly deserve it!!
I can verify your experience is not atypical with Verizon FiOS customer support. Just making the call is tortuous in the first place. It is very hard to get a live person and you must go through endless routines with the automated voice before you get through to a person. Say "AGENT" three times and that should get you through. Then the rep has
11 minutes to get you off the phone so they don't have time to read the previous notes and immediately jump to the standard troubleshooting even if you tell them this has already been done five times. In order for each level of support to escalate it to the next level they must prove it is not within the scope of their level and troubleshooting tools. If it gets escalated to Level 2 and they think they have fixed it remotely, they need only leave a message twice before closing the trouble ticket. Once it's closed you start all over again with the entire process. If Level 2 can't fix it because it's an order problem or farther into the network then they have to put it into someone else's bucket after they prove they can't fix it. God forbid you have a billing problem or something goes wrong on a move order, that's when the real hell starts.
en the rep has
verizon fixed the agent statement it no longer works:(
I WISH the media would expose their poor customer service......
I forgot to mention theres a LARGE tree being supported by the main neighborhood fios line, the cable is taunt and the weight is bending and leaning the utility poles. the tree is on a abandoned right of way from 1950 when the homes were built.
verizon refuses to trim any tree, its against company policy. they wait till the line fails, which will likely be during a storm slowing service restoration.
they dont care,,,,,,,,,,,,
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