Verizon completely blew their installation date yesterday. I still do not have local phone service in Tampa, Florida. The idiocy of Verizon is becoming increasingly less surprising as time passes. The annoyance with being required to fax in multiple forms of identification to be allowed local phone service has been transmuted into more of a dull, perpetual rage anytime the name Verizon is mentioned anywhere.
The only conclusion I can come to while I’m stuck on hold for fifteen minutes now, after making multiple unsuccessful attempts earlier at progressing through Verizon’s useless, automated phone system’s idiocy masked by a cheerful female voice, is that Verizon does have any interest in providing phone service to individuals. Verizon just wants the copper. Those living in a region controlled by Verizon are innocent victims of a growing, government sanctioned telecommunications monopoly on local phone service.
Mind you, when you actually manage to speak to a Verizon representative, the individual in question is always polite and helpful within the scope of the Verizon bureaucracy. Meanwhile, after 24 minutes on the phone I’m told service should be installed this afternoon. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was no service previously, as I rarely find people in Tampa that actually use Verizon.
Silly me for wanting a landline, just “in case”.
The line technician called me from the field at 4:30 p.m. to see if I’d be around anytime soon to verify the line. I won’t be, but he gave me his cell number just in case the wiring closet wasn’t labeled correctly.
Waiting on hold still bites, though.
Testing the line this evening, it seems to work. Finally, a working landline.
Now I need to ditch this worthless Sprint PCS service that has zero coverage in my area.
Update, January 21st. Verizon’s useless automated system called to let me know DSL cannot be installed until February 1st! Fighting with Verizon’s worthless online automated phone system is a complete joke. The female voice is extremely combative and flat out refuses to transfer you to a human, no matter how much you shout, whine, cry, or curse. The traditional buttons to get out of this are also unavailable, so no pressing zero for operator or one for yes. (I’m not making this up!) If you shout agent enough, eventually, you’ll be placed in the queue for a representative. But, at 1 p.m. on a Saturday, Verizon is so overwhelmed, they refuse service and hang up on you. Very nice.
If you’re really sick of these worthless shams of customer service companies continue forcing upon customers, you may want to check out Paul English’s IVR Cheat Sheet, which tries to point you in the right direction with respect to actually getting to a human being — assuming the company you’re being screwed by with has any — to speak with you directly.
Update, January 24th. Verizon, in less than two weeks, has sold my number to telemarketers. I received my first call today and the woman asked for me by name and had my current address. In the words of Captain Spock: I believe my response would be, go to hell; if I were human.
Update, January 28th. Verizon’s automated phone system has given me two dates for DSL service activation: yesterday and February 1st. Of course, service doesn’t work today, although the modem does sync. Calling customer (dis)service and fighting with Verizon’s worthless automated response system, I finally speak with a representative who tells me my service won’t really be active until the 30th. Same company, same service, three different answers.
Huh?
Update, February 3rd. Thanks to Verizon, every four out of five calls on my voice mail is from a telemarketing company’s voice recorded message hanging up on me after realizing they’re talking to my Verizon voice mail. So, I called this morning to cancel my worthless Verizon voice mail service. When asked why I wanted to cancel it, being the only extra service I have on my Verizon landline, I explained the telemarketing situation for the sake of completeness.
The CSR immediately pounced on me — the Verizon coolaid flowing strongly in her veins — proclaiming Verizon does not sell your personal information. But of course you don’t… you only sell information that’s already freely available in an electronic format to parasitic telemarketing companies to easily process into their systems. Gosh, same difference. Verzion sold my phone number to spammers!
Thank you for providing me with more value-add than I can psychologically handle, Verizon!
Update, February 25th. Apparently the recurring monthly charge for voice mail isn’t the only cost. There’s a $10 setup fee that was not disclosed to me when I signed up for it. How nice.
Update, April 21st. Had sad. Verizon is the only company I’ve done business with that’s screwed up automated billing enrollment. I filled out the silliness on the back of my bill, mailed in a cheque, and it my bank claimed it was autoprocessed. But, sure enough, I find when looking online that recurring billing has not been enabled, even after checking their silly box. Typical. I wonder how many months I’ll be writing cheques and checking boxes until Verizon figures it out?
And it gets better. The online pay page is broken. The help graphic is so outdated it doesn’t even reflect the current bills Verizon sends. All variations of the bill due date aren’t considered valid, so it isn’t possible to proceed. How sad.
On the plus side, they haven’t complained about my 24/7 utilization of my connection, yet.
jennifer said,
August 23, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Well, its been six months and Verizon is still withdrawing funds from my bank account. I haven’t had service through them since Feb. I hate Verizon, they’re theives and liers.
Jill Fleming said,
November 29, 2006 at 2:11 pm
About two weeks ago, we changed to Verizon landline service. What a mistake! Our landline does not yet work. The workman who installed the line said he needed to return to fix something and never came back. The automated repair system is a big waste of time and I end up yelling agent many times before I get to someone human. The first 4 times I called I didn’t even know there was an option to reach a human. Luckily, the automated system was broken and I accidentally talked to a real person and he told me in the future to say, “agent.” Furthermore, if you don’t test your telephone outside of the house where the box is, you will be charged a fortune for a repairman. Our phone works on and off so I had to do alot of testing of phones inside and outside the house to make sure it was Verizon’s problem. Apparently, they are only responsible for the line on the outside of the house.
The next step is setting up an appt. and hoping they will actually come. Even though I called and confirmed my appt. that morning and gave them my cell phone number, Verizon decided to reschedule my appt. without telling me. I only found out after they were an hour late and I called for their whereabouts. I had rearranged my whole schedule to be here that day and they just decided to come the next day without telling me!
We depend heavily on our landline for messages and when we are at home. We are not big cell phone users and most friends, doctors, the schools and businesses do not have our cell phone number. I find it very disruptive to rely on the cell phone for everything because I am driving the car alot or in places and business that ask for cell phones to be turned off. I also find that the cell phone often delivers messages unreliably and late. Our landline messages are much more immediate and reliable. I have missed 3 important appts. in the last three days because of this Verizon problem. As soon as our line is repaired, we will be changing our service.
Jim said,
April 4, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Don’t be late on a Verizon DSL bill. I paid the late fee and was up to date on my bill. They shut my DSL off, but no Verizon representative could explain why because my account was up to date. They did say they would reenable it for a $50.00 service charge. No more Verizon for me. BrightHouse Road Runner Light (no contract, no setup fees, bandwidth comparable to my ex Verizon DSL). Great customer service. Great product. Near 100% uptime. No problems if one of my bills is paid late. No I don’t work for BrightHouse. I work for SDHC. I am just another Verizon hater. I forgot to mention the fact that when I refused to pay the $50.00 service charge. They started billing me for early cancellation. Hey I didn’t cancel, they did!! I wonder how much money Verizon makes playing this game???
dawn said,
May 30, 2007 at 11:21 am
3 days I have called verizon asking for help with my home voicemail service .This service is very important as we own a business and are needing our messages. This morning I tried for the 3rd time to get a service tech to fix my phone problem…….They put me to 4 different extentions and many recordings letting me know I’ll be taped…….Finally a real person nice voice and no help ,told me howto go into voice mail and fix my own problem. I’ve had this service for 10 years,I know how to go in voicemail……But this I can’t fix. Ok, so my husband decides his wife is losing it and stays home this morning to help me help Verizon.We need our messages! As he watch me and was hearing the nice lady on the other end giveng me advice, he scrached his head and asked me to telkl her to call and listen to our problem. She said she coulden’t but, she could while I was on the phone call me and hear the problem.I must be off the phone I tell her for the 100th time. It;s not he busy message, it’s the we are not home please leave a message thats not working. Again this nice lady tells me how to correct the problem myself. Thanks Verizon but, I did not take that course and your nice lady is stupid also. I’ll call some other company, or I could get that old answer machine from Wall Mart. I’ll at least talk to a nice customer service lady and she will get me another box off the shelf. (for the same price exchange) of course.
Carol Bell said,
June 6, 2007 at 7:58 am
I have had problems with verizon service in the past and currently, One of the problems was I ordered DSL and was not told I was on a 1year Contract. Only after I cancelled and went with another service did I receive a extremely high telephone bill that could not be explained by customer service, after waiting on hold for about two hours, this is true I have been on hold on more than one occasions for about two hours only to express my frustration to the customer service about this. They just said we are busy today, they did not seem concern that I waited on the phone that long. Anyway I got exhausted of being on hold and going back in forth to different reps so I just went on and paid wherever they said was due for the DSL. verizon is still sending me bills from the DSL the last one so far is 14.95. Also, I called and speak with a supervisor about my DSL explaining to him that when I signed up for DSL the Rep did not tell me about the 1year contact, He was very rude and stated did you not get information in the mail when you received the DSL Box. I said you are still missing my point if I had been told by Rep when I called to sign up for the DSL I would have declined, the supervisor told me it was my fault because I should have read the information the came in the verizon box and that he I still would have to pay for the early cancellation fee. I felt I have totally taken advantage of, I vowed I would never have Verizon DSL again. I still do have verizon telephone basic service but I am considering cancelling that because the bill is more than what the rep told me it would be a month. Verizon is not like they use to be, they use to provide good service many years ago. Verizon Customer Service totally stinks, they are rude, and is not concerned how their customers feel.
Allen Weg said,
August 30, 2007 at 3:16 pm
OK, my turn. I have Verizon landline at home with the capacity for 6 voicemail boxes. At present I have 4 operational, and I wanted to open the last two. In the past, (about 2 years ago) when I called, I got one live person right away, who walked me through the process of setting up the additional boxes that I needed. This time, when I phoned, I got the computer voice, who connected me to a certain department after I went through the obligatory 5 minute interview and menu options. This happened SEVEN times because it kept connecting me to the wrong department, who then transferred me again, and ultimately got me disconnected. During all this time I am also online trying to look up the information on Verizon.net, but with no luck.
So get this, after all that I finally get connected to a woman (Mrs Pickman) in one of the departments (who remembers? Maybe customer service), and explain to her my situation and share with her my exasperation (we are now about 45 minutes into when I first started this process), PLEADING with her not to transfer me. She takes out a manual at her desk, thumbs through it, finds the instructions, faxes it to me (whe had to hang up because my fax is on the same line as my phone), follows up with a phone call back to me after she faxes, and reviews it with me until we figured out what to do. I would have asked her to marry me right there and then if I weren’t already! But then, when I asked her, so how do I complain about this experience? who do I talk to about it, she says there is no one, there is no department or number for that- can you believe it? Obviously a company that has NO interest in truly servicing its customers and hearing what it is that they can do better! Whew! Thanks for the opportunity to vent!
Jeremiah of Fairfax, VA said,
October 17, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Two days after verizon fios install (TV, Phone, Internet) received a call from Washington Post addressing me by name, saying “I see that you are new to the area, did you just move in?” Well, I wasn’t new to the area, just new to verizon. I asked her how she got my information and she actually stated that she bought it from verizon. While I appreciated her honesty, I couldn’t get to the National Do Not Call Registry quick enough. I am considering cancelling my entire service and going back to Cox internet for $27/month. (1.5mbps down), $15/month Vonage (worthless stock), and HD Tivo with roof-mounted UHF antenna, pulling full OTA HD terrestrial broadcasts (Tivo $17/month). My Actiontec router is currently locking up with my alleged 5mbps down, we’ll see if the replacement Derrick from FIOS is sending me will correct that problem, but I don’t see why the exact same model with the exact same firmware and the exact same hardware revision will act any different. Derrick didn’t seem to know, either.
John webb said,
December 14, 2007 at 5:19 pm
I’ve had no trouble with the phone service , however I do have a problem with the big green box next to my driveway . The transformer is badly in need paint and is positioned at an angle . I work hard trying to keep my lawn looking nice , but the big ugly green box in it’s present condition is an eyesore and distracts from the appearance of my lawn . A new paint job and alignment would be appreciated .
Lee said,
January 17, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Since Verizon has a definite “monopoly” they have no need for a “complaint line”.
And it appears that they do not always tell the truth or they tell people whatever they have to in order to “hook” the customer, as noted in the above listings.
It seems like their only interest is in “selling” you as many services as possible. Does anyone know if their reps are paid bonuses or must meet quotas based on what they can get you to subscribe to?
And they don’t need to provide Customer Service either. So what if the people complain, who will listen to them?
They can do anything they want.
Perhaps you all need to write to the President of Verizon, your Governor and other representatives, your Attorney General, the Public Service Commission, and anyone else you can think of. Maybe you could even include links to these sites, there are a lot of them online, so they can actually see for themselves what is going on.