Slightly OT -- Goodbye Verizon

[Pat]

Verizon seems to be in complete chaos today after completely screwing up my dry-loop DSL order over a month ago when I canceled my land-line in favor of Vonage. They had no records of my dry loop being installed and had some dry-loop number reserved for me but never installed.

Two techs were here yesterday and couldn't make sense out of it. They came because my service kept going down. They used my computer to run a test and the result said that the modem was off -- now THAT is screwed up.

This morning, the internet died. Dead. So I called Verizon and they seemed like an 8-armed Indian God where the 3rd arm from the left didn't know what the 2nd arm from the right was doing. I was on the phone for over an hour.

The final result was that I had to cancel the non-working DSL number that was never hooked up. That will take 3 to 5 business days. After that, I have to call them back and re-order DSL. It'll be another 3 to 5 days to get it hooked up. Sure I'll call them. ;-) Meanwhile, I called our local cable company and got internet through them. $5 per month more for 4.5X the speed. It's up and running but they are sending a tech out tomorrow to get the speed up to where it should be. It is only running at 2X DSL speed right now. The is a bit more latency in it that DSL but I'll live with it.

So in the last 6 weeks I have dropped my land-line service and my DSL service. Tomorrow the fax line goes, too, because I have a cloud- based service to do that for a LOT less than Verizon. So tomorrow this will be a Verizon-free zone.

It is hard to believe how much technology has changed. Not long ago Verizon was the ONLY way to get phone service and AT&T was a monopoly. Now, they are gone from my house. Wow.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and did a pretty good job of it. Too bad he didn't invent Customer Service to go along with it.

[Doug Miller]

Bell Telephone always had outstanding customer service. Verizon customer service, OTOH, has always sucked, all the way back when they were GTE (Generally Terrible Electronics).

[George]

Not particularly in love with Verizon but consider what someone needed to pay Bell Telephone in today's dollars vs Verizon or most other carriers. People want cheap. They got it.

[bob haller]

I have suffered thru FIOS HELL:(

Including a noisey router so 1 of 12 callers couldnt be heard thru the static, had to call every day for 3 weeks to get it finally fixed, it was a bad router at the central office. not bad iunside wiring every rep said that.

I get at least one mailing daily and many verizon sales people at my door, even after calling the police on one who didnt have a permit, the last couple said they were verizon contractors but refused to identify their employeer.

I could of heated my home for the wnter by burning all the flyers they send.

my FIOS backup battery failed after 6 months causing a alarm beeping. they wanted me to pay for the replacement battery which was supposed to last 6 or 8 years. they finally agreed it should be covered under warranty but it took over 2 weeks to get a replacement battery. worse reps dont know about the alarm silence button.

attempts to cancel for poor service gets your under 2 year contract the penalty is hundreds of dollars.

I WILL NEVER BE UNDER CONTRACT WITH VERIZON FOR ANYTHING!

if it works great if you have a problem your out of luck, ..............

and in for lots of frustration

[Nate Nagel]

Yabbut, when I was a kid, having a working land line was waaaay more important than it is today. And, I don't ever remember the phone going out. Ever.

Today, with Verizon, the service is worse and still more expensive than my cell service. (well, OK, as of two-three years ago, when I gave up on them)

My parents live in a rural area with poor cell coverage. Their phone TODAY goes out all the time, and I don't remember that happening when I lived with them. That worries me somewhat, but they are still able bodied enough to walk or drive to somewhere with cell coverage if they have to.

nate

[PatM]

Today the Cable company tech came out because my internet was supposed to be 8 mbps and it was running at 3 (still twice the DSL speed). He changed by grounding block due to corrosion (his exact words were, "Oh my God, that's an antique") (it was at least 20 years old). He then ran a new cable line for me -- straight from where it hit the house to the modem. Not it is running between 5 mbps and 11 mbps, depending on the test, time of day, voodoo and whatever.

There is definitely more lag with this than with the DSL but it also didn't take 2 weeks to get installed. I did the self install myself, they tested it from somewhere in PA, and then the tech was there at

10:00 the next morning. You can't beat that.

The tech said that he and the other tech that handle this area (we are a small community of about 5,000) were doing 9 phone installs today. Wow. Verizon must not be doing any new installs. That's a lot for a city of this size.

I don't like the lag but I guess I'll have to live with it.

Here's an interesting detail I found out that is SIGNIFICANTLY different between cable and DSL. For cable, they provision (register) the modem but really don't know where it is. So you can take it to someplace else in the same cable system locality and plug it into their cable and it'll work. So for example, if my kid is going to a friend's house for a night of on-line gaming, he could take the router and plug it into the friend's cable and it'll work. Therefore they can meet up and bring the highest speed with them for the night. That's pretty wild.