Administrivia: Can I survive DSL problems with Verizon ??
Administrivia: So far Verizon is living down to my expectations. After having intermittent problems for the last two months, the problem was finally consistent enough that I could get a tech on the phone to finally admit that things might not be perfect. He was very well indoctrinated by Verizon and kept trying to describe a connection that was often 100% dead as "Maybe not as fast as it should be" This was on Thursday.
Since I could not sched being home for most of the day till Tuesday, I left it with my calling back on Friday when the dispatchers were available and scheduling an appointment for Tuesday. So of course the tech shows up at my house unscheduled when I'm not home for a non-existent appointment on Friday.
Based on the messages he left on the voice-mail, he did seem to do what he could without access to the apt and the telephone poll which is in the back yard. The field techs are usually the only ones who give honest answers to direct questions. After this error I thought I'd still try and get an appointment for Tuesday. So I called up and scheduled a visit for Tuesday without much of a problem. But this being Verizon, I plan for the worst.
So Monday afternoon I called up to confirm my appointment with an on-site tech on Tuesday morning. Here was the Verizon I knew and didn't love. When I got thru, I got a recording telling me that my ticket had been closed on the day I opened it. When I talked to the phone-tech, he tried to convince me that it was closed because the problem had actually been fixed. Of course he couldn't answer the question of why they thought it had been fixed, or what had actually been done to fix the problem. Isn't it fun the way the person that you are allowed to talk to never has access to the information that you need? You are just supposed to take on faith that whatever is entered in the computer is always accurate and true. Don't worry that you can't seem to connect, the computer says that your problem has been fixed. Sigh ... So I played the game with another phone tech and after almost an hour finally got him to open a new ticket and reinstate my Tuesday appointment. Later today I'll get to see if anyone shows up, and if they do, can they actually fix my problem.
You are welcome to add comments with your own stories about dealing with Verizon. Who knows, maybe I'll actually hear from someone at Verizon about fixing my DSL line. If it stays like this I'll have to check out getting a cable modem.
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The on-going saga with Verizon DSL.
Well as I expected, the time for the appointment came and went, but no Verizon Tech. So I get back on the phone and start giving them some grief. The lady does some checking and guess what. Despite all the promises made by the guy last night, there never was an appointment put on the books for this morning. So I politely give her another helping of grief and manage to get escalated to a supervisor.
The supervisor got on and confirms that no appointment had been entered on my trouble ticket, but he would be glad to set one up for me, and he promised that this one would actually exist. I mentioned that a lot of what he was saying was the same speech given by the guy the previous night. While this supervisor did give me the "Trust Me" speech, he did back it up with a direct line. I got an appointment sched for Wednesday morning. Lets what happens.
Update: While I have been writing this I got a call from another supervisor at Verizon. It seems that he is going to actually try and get the visit moved up to this afternoon. Lets see if I can get lucky. There are some good folks there, to bad they are so hard to find.
Happy Ending ?
I'm not sure I should really call this a happy Ending considering all the grief it took to get to this point, but it appears that my DSL may be working again :-) I hadn't expected a tech to be here at all till tomorrow morning or maybe close to 5PM tonight, but he appeared at my door around 3PM. He ran the local tests and saw the problems I was calling about. First he took an old capacitor out of the Network Interface Jack(NIJ), that cleaned things up a bit, but there were still signal drops. He ended up having to swap out my wire pair from my building to the concentrator. When he was done my DSL was back up to full speed and I could actually hear people on the phone.
As usual, when you can get a field tech out to the site, they can usually fix the problem. The hard part is getting the script reading people on the phone to admit that they need to send a field-tech. From beginning to end, this dragged on for almost 2 months, with the phone people almost always trying to make the problem something that was my responsibility.
And with all this joy they bring, Verizon management can't seem to understand why we don't love them.
Verizon strikes again !!
I knew it was to good to be true. The Verizon saga continues. It seems that they didn't fix my DSL & phone lines according to the manual. Maybe I scared someone into saying "Fix it, no matter what you have to do! I don't want to hear from that guy again!!"
It looks like they fixed my line by taking my neighbor's away from them. I had even jokingly asked the tech just before he left, "We didn't kill someone else's line to fix this one, did we?" He said no, but that's not what the new tech says. They got their voice back rather quickly, after first getting all the static I used to have. But their DSL is still down, and I haven't heard the tech who was scheduled to come today.
your problem is exactly my problem
Everything you have said happened to you from the reps on the phone to the no show tech, because they had fixed it without coming over, has and is happening to me now. I have a problem where the DSL doesn't work between 1 and 3 during the day, mostly during the weekdays. I had an appointmnet today for someone to come and when they hadn't appeared ,I called and was told the appoinment was canceled by Verizon because the problem was fixed there. As I was on the phone I told the rep. the dsl is out. Now another appoinment is scheduled for tomorrow and I'm supposed to be contacted before they arrive.
do all on one ticket
If at all possible get them to reopen the original ticket and do ALL work under that one number. This keeps the clock running (outage wise) from the first report. If they close the original and create a new ticket, the time(outage) starts over at zero and won't show up on any of the reports that list extended problems.
DSL Hell
I am on the phone right now for about the 20th time in the 25 days I have had their service. They scheduled an appt.-didn't show and claimed that it was not made. Then called me to confirm that I would be home for an appointment that I had not made. A tech finally came out at an agreed time. It worked for a day. I get speeds anywhere from 0 kbps 486kbps when I am paying for 3mbs. Luckily I get 6 mo. free of this crap. I will then pay a $79 cancellation fee so I don't have to pay the next 6 months at $30 a month. Today I got a $30 credit for all the trouble. I will apply this to the $79 fee and have 6 mo. for $49. Luckily it works for email and some other things, just not as promised. I am on the phone to another Indian right now, gotta go.