Friday, September 14, 2012

What Verizon Doesn't Want You to Know About Their Internet Service

So you know from my last post about the troubles I've been having with Verizon internet for months. For months, I have dealt with the internet in my house dropping throughout each day. Inconvenient and not ok since I work from home part of the time. My husband and I have spent hours and hours troubleshooting the issue, on the phone, waiting for service calls, setting up a new router, corresponding with Verizon. So imagine my dismay when the Verizon service tech who visited my house this morning told me this:
"I'll be honest with you--Verizon knows what's causing these intermittent service interruptions but they don't want to fix it until enough people complain. It's not your equipment, it's a "pawn card" (not sure if that's spelled right--I didn't ask the guy to spell it) that Verizon needs to replace in their equipment but they don't want to do it until enough people complain. So I can look at your wires and pretend to fix something, but the reality is that there's nothing I can do or fix--your internet won't work right until Verizon replaces the [pawn card] in their equipment. I go on these service calls every day, knowing full well what the problem is and that Verizon needs to fix it, and pretending to fix something when in reality the truth is that there's nothing wrong other than that Verizon needs to replace that card. So nothing I can do will make any difference."
Then he got in his truck and drove away. Didn't so much look at one thing at my house. Not for one second.

Are you kidding me Verizon? I've spent hours and hours of my time dealing with this in one way or another for months and months, including 35 minutes on the phone the other day troubleshooting my router, and reserving a four hour chunk of my day today for a service call, and this is what I get? A personal messenger from Verizon telling me that Verizon knows their service doesn't work right and doesn't care? That Verizon knows that people working from home are losing productivity and wasting time troubleshooting something that's in their power to fix, but they're not going to fix it until they're good and ready?

That is unacceptable. Verizon is spending all this money marketing a service that they know doesn't work right but they're willing to gamble on wasting customer's time until they decide it's enough of an issue that they need to actually fix it? They're making me--a paying customer--and thousands more just like me--spend their time on this crap when they already know what's broken, but they're just not ready yet to fix it? And instead they're fine having people like me reserve a four-hour chunk of my day to have a tech come to my house, tell me this, and drive away?

I'm seriously at a loss here. And Comcast's service better have improved, because I have no other choice than to switch to Comcast now!

UPDATE: apparently this is a known issue and something that's happening with many Verizon customers, based on the number of posts about it on Verizon's forums.

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