Thanks Verizon – you so rock

I dropped Time Warner Cable and their sucky RoadRunner Internet service at the first opportunity to get Verizon FIOS.

I got the 20/20 Internet service. That thing totally rocks. Faster than anything. No lag anywhere, online gaming is once again working flawlessly no matter what else I do over the net connection.

We also got the phone service, and later the FIOS TV service.

This is when things started going south.

The first thing that happened is that Verizon completely messed up our bill. What should’ve been something like $65 / month bill (we didn’t have TV service at first) was $305 USD on the first bill.

It turns out Verizon charged us for the router when it should’ve been free. Then they double billed us for the Internet account, once for the 20/5 service that belongs in the Double Freedom internet/phone bundle, and once for the 20/20 service we actually had. Two hours on the phone and the bill was adjusted. Great use of our time. Next month the same thing happened. Two more hours on the phone. Let’s see what happens on the third bill that’s yet to come. We currently have something like $150 credit on the account. I don’t, for a moment, believe that’s accurate.

Next thing Verizon screwed up was the FIOS TV installation. We had the extreme pleasure of getting an installation date on the same day the Verizon FIOS workers were threatening to strike. Eventually there was no strike, but that didn’t prevent the installation crews from walking out on their jobs on the day of our installation date. Nobody bothered to call us that they weren’t working that day, so we waited the entire day for the crews to arrive. Thanks Verizon. Really, really appreciated that.

Verizon then further screwed us up by rescheduling the installation date over two weeks forward. I missed almost the entire Olympics due to that. Really, really appreciated that, too.

Sometime this week, most likely yesterday, someone at Verizon decided that I didn’t really need that 20/20 Internet connection I was already paying for, and dropped it to a 20/5 connection. Gee, thanks guys. That’s so f***ing awesome.

I haven’t had time to call about that one yet, but I’m sure it’ll be an interesting conversation and I’m 100% sure as a result our bill we be even MORE screwed up.

As if that wasn’t enough, I also noticed this Tuesday that none of my mail is coming through to verizon.net. I use a forwarding account that allows me to keep a very easy to remember Email address no matter which Internet Service Provider I use. I simply forward all email sent to that address to my current Email address, and I don’t have to let anyone know that my Email address ever changed. I’ve had the forwarding account since 1996. It works like a charm. That is, until Verizon decides to bitbucket all email sent to that address delivered to my verizon.net account. Even worse, they’re not bouncing the emails, but silently dropping them, so nobody has any idea that email sent to me is not getting through. Email sent directly to my verizon.net account or routed via different forwarders is working perfectly fine. This one I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY fucking appreciate.

Update: And when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I couldn’t have been more wrong. My wife calls me at noon from home to inform me the Internet is down. Fine, it happens, the routers have hiccups. She calls again in an hour and says TV, phone and Internet is down. Yep, we have no service whatsoever at the moment. I can’t WAIT to hear the explanation to this one. There’s a Verizon tech coming to see why the ONT (the FIOS box in our home that hooks the house to Verizon’s fiber optic network) is blinking FAIL by 6pm today. Let’s see if he turns up and let’s see how long it actually takes to fix this. I’m guessing early next week.

Update 2: The ONT failure has been fixed and our home has FIOS service again. Apparently someone had come and done some work in the neighborhood where our ONT box connects to the Verizon fiber optic network, unplugged our connection and plugged it back into a wrong plug. That’s what the Verizon tech who came to fix it told my wife. Nice work guys! Let’s see what happens next.

-TPP