posted
I hate Verizon. A lot. Like TomD hated church as a child.
I'm just trying to order DSL. Not that I want DSL, but it's the only choice I have other than dial-up, which is no choice at all. I placed my order for DSL on July 11. They cancelled the order on Tuesday, and I've spent, I think 8 hours now trying to get a human person on the phone to help me find out why the order was cancelled, and how I can get it reinstated so I can do my !#$@# job after I move next week.
When I talked to their technical support last night, they said to call back early this morning (5am) and ask for Provisioning. Only I can't do that, because every time I try the number they gave me, their maze-like phone system hangs up on me. I amused myself with that for a while, until I finally gave up and went to the Better Business Bureau's website, where the phone number for the CEO's office is listed. I called THAT number and amazingly, got a real person. She gave me another number to call, where I got another human person, who also can't help me. So now, I'm sitting on hold again, wishing I could die or kill someone.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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DSL is still a delicate technology and it sounds like there are some technical reasons they can't service you. Unfortunately, companies, for some reason, think it's good customer service to not let their engineers explain what's going on. Provisioning is what I do, and chances are the tech support guy was in major violation of company policy by even giving you their number. Most provisioning and engineering groups are forbidden customer contact (supposedly so customers aren't bothering us, but I think also because engineers are notoriously bad about just telling everyone exactly the way things are at the moment).
Anyhow, I bet there's a technical glitch and that there's about a 30% chance they can fix it... and until they know better they'll keep you in the dark.
But don't blame Verizon... that's just standard telecom operations from what I've seen working for four different companies and having worked with many others, including Verizon, as a business customer.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I know that I had Verizon DSL for two years and only cancelled it because Nathan gets free broadband as a Comcast employee.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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This is what it's like every single time I call Time Warner's Roadrunner support. Which is often, since the service is incredibly unreliable. Sometimes due to understandable causes, like downed power lines, but more often because someone in their billing office screwed up and disconnected the wrong house, or because they waited until 3 months after we moved in to disconnect the previous tenants, or because we moved and none of their technicians know where the main cable line is in our very popular 100-unit townhouse community.
I've found my inevitable emotional breakdowns when I finally get through to a human often get us some free months of service. It's still not worth it, though, so I very much look forward to the day when we can colo the server somewhere reliable and get a decent, non-time-warner connection at home. Mmmmm.
Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I'd beg to differ about not blaming Verizon. They took the order, assuring me that they did have service in that neighborhood. When I placed the order, I had already exhausted every other possibility of ordering from someone else, because I really don't want DSL. I want Broadband. After talking to every broadband company in the area (Comcast, Wave, and Tulalip Cablevision) I was assured that the only high-speed option was Verizon's DSL. So half in panic, because I have dealt with Verizon before with a definite rememberance of non-overwealming love, I placed the order. The person I talked to was local, as there is a sales office about 10 miles south of the neighborhood I'm moving into. She said very definitively, to my relief as I was starting to picture myself camped out at Starbucks trying to do my job, that there was service in that area.
So anyway, now I'm off the phone with nothing resolved having been told by people in Virginia that there is nothing to be done to help me. I'm leaving in an hour to go sign papers on the house that it looks like I will not actually be able to effectively work out of, after having been lied to by a company I will always, for the rest of my life, decry as the vermin of telecommunications.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I'm loving my Verizon DSL. Sorry it doesn't work for you.
We get calls a few times a week trying to get us to switch to the Cable TV modem. Cable TV is one business that I am glad to not have to do business with anymore. We've cut the cable and are free and easy!
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Oh, and I should clarify that Verizon as a national company has a decent reputation. The Verizon divisions in Washington State, however, have a poor rating with the BBB for unresolved issues. Now I see why.
Zeug, I've heard horror stories about Roadrunner from customers out east. I can well empathize.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Here's how it works: phone lines don't run straight, and even the phone companies don't know how they all run (or what all are attached to them; certain equipment attached to a phone line makes it impossible to use DSL on it, such as old repeaters).
So what they do is make guesstimates on service areas based on their CO (central offices, where the DSLAMs are) and give them to their sales people, who can then sell to anyone in those regions. They do overestimate the areas a bit on the off-chance some of the people on the fringe can get it, which does happen, even though most won't be able to.
The only way to be sure DSL will or won't work on a line is to try hooking it up and testing it.
Now, the big problem is a lack of internal updating of those regions to include people who can't get DSL/likely patches of non-coverage. And of course, overzealous sales people might conveniently overlook such notations where they do occur.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I didn't mean to say that Verizon doesn't suck in precisely the way you describe (and my experiences with them as both a residential and a business customer in Texas were very similar to yours)... I only meant to say that most other Telecom companies, including three of the four that I have worked for (and maybe all four... I don't know enough about this current one because I'm not in operations) would give you the exact same runaround. SBC is the only one, in my experience, that didn't... but that was as a business customer, not residential.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Heheh, yeah, SBC puts a lot of money into serving the business customers (I did SBC (Home) Customer Self Install tech support for a few months).
For the home end, they do similar stuff, but our phone system was actually navigable, and we have access to the notes from the install run and the like, and we have a surplus of provisioning techs sitting around, so you'd find out in maybe twenty minutes to half an hour of your time.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote: But don't blame Verizon... that's just standard telecom operations from what I've seen working for four different companies and having worked with many others, including Verizon, as a business customer.
Just because all the other companies are doing it doesn't make it OK.
We had BellSouth DSL. When we moved, they decided to switch over our phone service almost a week earlier than they were scheduled, so we had to have them switch it back. Of course, that meant it was almost a month before they got around to doing it. And then they didn't bother to hook up the DSL.
We told them to what they could do with their DSL and got Earthlink. Now that they're about to hike the phone rates about 10 or 15%, we're going to tell them what they can do with the phone service to and get Vonage or something.
jeni, can't you get satellite broadband where you're going?
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Satellite Broadband is typically expensive and unreliable... but yeah, should be availible just about anywhere... and again... not OK, just not going to get any better anywhere else.
I don't know if it's worth it to you, but comapnies will go a lot further for business class customers... and busniess class VoDSL packages are actually pretty reasonable. At Birch, we were selling 768K SDSL with 3 phone lines for about $130-150 a month. That's half a T-1 and three business class phone lines... I don't know if you'd have a use for that or what Verizon's pricing is, but it might be worth talking to an actual sales rep about... or one of the competitive carriers in your area.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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What just kills me is that, every singe time I have to try to deal with Time Warner, it is so obvious that there is NO amount of accountability or personal responsibility anywhere in the organization. We have a local TW branch, but they don't answer phone calls (period.), so I have to call the Syracuse branch whenever something goes wrong. Being an hour away, they usually don't have any idea what's happening in my area, and tell me that they'll try to transfer me to someone who does. Of course, the Ithaca branch doesn't answer phone calls, so that transfer never actually works, and I end up having to sit through the phone tree again to get Syracuse. The second time, Syracuse escalates me to the national tech support line, where the people answering the phone know even less about my situation, and again transfer me to some unknown number that cuts me off.
So I sit through the (usually 2-3 hour, because they're experiencing "longer than average hold times") queue, get Syracuse, who says they don't really know what to do for me, because in the meantime, the guy who could have helped me has gone home for the day. Why wasn't I transferred to him 6 hours ago? They don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody is willing to take responsibility for my case, and get the problem solved. All anyone can do is pass me off to someone else, who also passes me on.
When I finally drive down to the main branch and start talking (quietly, I'm not a mean customer, I just tend to cry a lot), to someone who's actually in the same room as me, things tend to happen. Even though the people behind the desk at the Ithaca branch really AREN'T supposed to help me (we're Business Class Roadrunner, not Residential TV service, which is all they support there), the fact that I'm actually standing in the same room with the rep seems to give them a sense of accountability, and cell phone numbers are pulled magically out of the air, and local technicians are dispatched on the case.
Of course, we usually have to go through this a couple of times, since the local technicians usually don't know what to do about our problem the first or second time they come out, but at least something HAPPENS at that point.
I hates them, precious, I hates them so much.
During this last move, we'd intended to stay with TW for our TV service, since that's what we'd had in the past. During the 2-week debacle of trying to get our service up, though, we realized we could get a satellite dish, and switched SO fast that TW didn't have time to get the message that we no longer wanted TV service (it usually takes them a few weeks to get that kind of message, don'tcha know). When one of the technicians came out to continue to search for the main cable line, he brought a cable box with him, and in one of my more frustrated moments I explained to him that we wouldn't need it, and he might want to start learning how to install and repair satellites. That was definitely the meanest I was, though. Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
We had a similar situation in the uncertainty of whether DSL would work.
Our Apartment complex is smack dab in the middle of a Comcast service area. But when we moved in we were informed that our complex has a ten year contract with Bellsouth where only Bellsouth can service the complex (i didn't even know that Bellsouth HAD Cable, but they do here). So we had to get DSL (their cable does not offer broadband). When we moved in the landlord said it would be a non issue. when i called to place the order, Bellsouth said there were no ports available. I explained that our neighbor had the service, but she said that didnt mean we could. A few more phonecalls yielded similar uncertainty and a "probably not". but then i was on the phone pleading with this woman to make the impossible, possible. and she did. She still made no guarantees however, but she did order the service for us.
I was anxious everyday until the DSL modem arrived in the mail. When i plugged it in, it worked like a charm.
Yay Relief. But yea, i've learned that apparently DSL is very picky about where it will or won't work.
Posts: 1572 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Almost any line can be made to work with DSL... it's just that making some work gets very expensive and the phone companies are less willing to do that.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote: The person I talked to was local, as there is a sales office about 10 miles south of the neighborhood I'm moving into.
So can you drive to that office and yell at someone in person? That always seems to get results.
(this is also why I always deal with local companies. My ISP has their main office just one block from where I work. If I ever have a complaint, I know where to find them. But I've never had a complaint....)
Hope you get it figured out. I just wish I had the DSL option at home..
Farmgirl (*still waiting on Broadband Over PowerLines to come to my local REC)
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Yeah, any location could be made to work with DSL, and most lines, but it will sometimes mean altering the line, or putting in significant new hardware and employing more personnel (for places just too far out, for instance).
A good example of a line that can't have DSL is a line out on a fiber extension, the fiber would need to be replaced.
A copper line can carry at least a weak DSL signal a short distance, though, provided any impeding hardware has been removed.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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and fiber is the only show-stopper I am aware of... the rest involve conditioning the line, rather than replacing it (unless of course the line is just broken).
edit to add: for distance issues, HDSL is repeatable... but repeaters cost $
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I know in swapping stories with some provisioning techs I've heard of really old lines that had just far too much interference to acquire sync even for a little bit, and would only work if replaced.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Jim, that's a good suggestion, on going to business class. I'll check around today after I get back from signing away my first born child to the bank. If I could get half a T1 and three phone lines for less than $200/mth, I would be a very VERY happy woman.
Failing that, it'll have to be satellite. *sigh*
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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for $200, you might be able to get a full T-1 (which these days is typically an HDSL line at some point anyhow), but I've been out of the pricing loop for a while so it might not have continued gettiong cheaper. Birch used to sell a full T-1 with 5 static IPs and 3-5 phoneline (minimum depending on your location) for under $300/month... but that was also in SBC territories... not sure what the pricing was in Bell South and we didn't service Verizon or other areas.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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So if I was interested in something that high powered, who do you think I should call? SBC isn't in Washington that I know of.
It's clear that Verizon is not interested in actually doing business with anyone in our area. I went by the cable company that services the area, and the gal there said that she talked with one of my new neighbors this morning. He apparently was spitting mad after having to deal with Verizon and was just as stressed out as I am. (Good thing I got a new prescription for migraine meds earlier this week...)
There are a *lot* of telecommuters in the neighborhood, I'm discovering. It just boggles my mind how stupid some companies can be. They have a good 6 month jump on their competition in the area, but choose to do nothing. Stupid stupid.
addited: Oh, my husband got me an alternative to satellite. I can work in his office, which is just down the road, less than two miles away. They have a good internet connection, and an extra office upstairs. The owner says I can use it for a few weeks until we figure out what I'm going to do long term. I don't think they'll let me use it for the next 6 months though. That's when the cable company is supposed to be upgraded and be able to support broadband.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Hmmm... Not finding a whole lot of CLECs (which isn't surprising, most of them are dead) try Qwest, perhaps? www.qwest.comPosts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I tried them already. I talked with one of my new neighbors last night, also a telecommuter, and he has tried everything: satellite, ISDN, dialup. He said that of all of them, dialup was the most reliable, and if he has to do a major data transfer, he goes down to Starbucks.
He did say that he had just started looking into Verizon's wireless broadband. I started reading about it last night, and it could possibly work. I will have to experiment. Otherwise, I will have to deal with dialup until the cable company gets broadband up and running.
Thanks very much for your help, Jim. I'm sure you can imagine how frustrating the past two days have been, and it was genuinely very helpful to me to have your calm suggestions out here for me to work on. I really, really appreciate it. Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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They're in a regular service area. I imagine it's either Verizon or Qwest. My husband's office, which is less than 2 miles away, uses a Verizon/Qwest dedicated line between their two offices, the other of which is in SeaTac.
This neighborhood is apparently in a weird area for service provision. Just across the street from Phase 2 of the development (we're in phase 1), Verizon does offer DSL. The info I had from my new neighbor is that there is a Verizon box at the base of our hill, which holds the stuff that services our area. They'll have to add a $50K box to it, and are reportedly holding off because the latest rumblings there are that it will eventually be converted to fiber. So they don't want to spend the money now only to have it replaced so soon. Apparently one of my new neighbors is a Verizon IT person, though I haven't met him yet, and that's where that info came from.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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