Some of you noticed that radio had all kinds of disconnects and technical issues on Wednesday. I have been battling with a troublesome internet problem since the beginning of 2016. Here is the nightmarish customer service experience I have been dealing with involving Verizon FIOS, which is my internet provider....
December 27, 2015: Internet works well, and has for years. I leave on a trip and turn off the router while gone, hoping it resets me to a different IP address. This is being done for privacy/tracking reasons, as it's always good to get a new IP every so often.
January 2, 2016: I turn the router back on. Everything seems fine at first, but the internet starts to have intermittent issues.
January 7: Internet gets really bad. Images posted to this site start taking a long time to load, as if I'm on dialup in 1999.
January 8 Call #1: I call Verizon FIOS tech support. They put me through a troubleshooting routine, which is required before a tech can be sent. About 15 minutes into it, while they are performing a "reset", it cuts me off the phone. Apparently this happens when they reset everything, and they didn't bother to call me back. Time completely wasted.
January 8 Call #2: I call tech support back. I am angry about not being called from being disconnected the prior time, because clearly the tech knew why the line cut. Tech repeatedly promises this time to call me back if disconnected. We go through a frustrating, 45-60 minute troubleshooting process over the phone (having to start the process all over). She DOES call me back during the first "reset" as promised. However, the line mysteriously cut while I was talking to her
nearly an hour into the call, and she didn't call me back, despite her promises to call me back in the event of any disconnection. Time completely wasted again.
January 8 Call #3: I call tech support back, and ask for a supervisor. Takes 15 minutes for a supervisor to come on. "Matt" comes on the phone. I start off by telling him to call me back if we're disconnected. He agrees. I speak to him for 30 more seconds and the line cuts. No call back. Time completely wasted a third time.
January 8 Call #4: At this point I'm on tilt. Unfortunately I receive an outsourced rep in Mexico, who swears he can take care of the situation. He promises that he has "sent a message to the central office" about my problem and to get a tech dispatched to my house, as well as submitted a complaint about the previous reps who never called me back. He sounded very patronizing and insincere. Could not provide me with any e-mail confirmation that this was done, or even any ticket #. Turned out he was lying through his teeth, and simply submitted a ticket with the one sentence, "Customer is unhappy he keeps getting disconnected when calling tech support."
January 9: It's now Saturday. I decide to reach "retention", which deals with cancellation of service. Unfortunately, Verizon has no real retention department anymore, and has rolled it into general orders and billing. I do get a nice rep who seems sympathetic, and in fact can see all 4 calls in the system from before. She admits that the situation "looks odd", especially that call #2 was so long with no ticket created. She promises to look into the matter with her supervisor on Monday (January 11) and call me back.
January 11: It seems this is solved. She tells me that she and her supervisor determined that I was dealing with a third-party company that was hired to work after hours for Verizon, and that indeed I was "mistreated" (her words, not mine). She does make me go through a long process of troubleshooting AGAIN, but with the promise that she will send me a new router once we complete it. We dd that, and she sent it.
January 13: Radio tonight. New router arrives in aftenoon. I hook it up. I am disappointed to see that the connection still sucks. Radio turns out to be terrible, with tons of disconnects and poor sound quality issues. I am embarrassed and frustrated.
January 14: I call back customer service and demand that they send a tech out here. I'm then told that it will be $100 for a tech to visit, because they determined from their "system tests" that the whole thing is on my end (LOL). After literally an hour's worth of debating this, the rep finds a way to make this happen without the charge. At first he kept insisting this was impossible, but finally he saw it my way (or he got tired of debating with me) and sent the tech for free. I wanted e-mail confirmation of this, but he said they have no way to do that. Finally, after a lot of research (supposedly), he found a way to send me an e-mail confirming that the visit would be free. Visit was scheduled for 1-5pm on January 15.
January 15: Gets to 4pm, no one has shown up or called. I was told they would call me with an approximate time of arrival, so this was strange. I called in, and was told by tech support that this was force-canceled by the tech support department at 11:05am (2 hours BEFORE the time frame was to start). Notes said, "This is not a good enough reason to send out a tech."
Of course, nobody called to inform me this had been canceled. I sat home and waited for them like a dumbass.
January 15, Call #2: I called customer service, and asked for a supervisor. Supervisor named Hal came on. I explained the whole thing. While the rep verified that indeed this had been force-canceled on me (which shouldn't have happened) and they also violated protocol by not informing me of the cancellation, he refused to credit my account for the missed appointment. Amazingly,
he claimed I had to waste another entire day waiting for them to come again, before he would decide whether he wants to credit me for what happened today. I told him that there was no reason for this, and that we should deal with today's fail first, and then deal with another appointment after that. He refused. I told him that I would cancel service if they didn't give me a good enough credit for what occurred today, and he kept repeating, "I can't tell you what credit I will give you until this is fixed. That's policy. You will have to wait until we fix this, and then we will discuss what we can give you." I asked him, "So you're telling me that I have to waste an entire second day on this before you will let me know if you will do anything for me about what happened the first day?" He said, "Yes, that's the policy." He lied. That's not the policy, and he just felt like being a dick. When I asked him to repeat all of what he just said, he asked me, "You're not recording this, right?" I said I wasn't. I said, "Okay, so once again, even though I'm about to cancel service because someone overruled a set appointment, canceled it, and didn't tell me, you won't let me know what kind of customer service credit I can get for this unless I make a SECOND appointment and waste another day on this?" He said, "I will not discuss what credit you will get at this time, correct." I then told him I was recording him and that he was going to be a star of YouTube. He got very upset and said, "But... but... you're not allowed to do that without our permission." I told him that nobody was going to stop me, and that he was going to be famous. I then hung up on him.
January 15, Call #3: I called back to the same department to see if I wouldn't reach an idiot this time. This time I got a better guy named Joe. He agreed that the previous rep was full of shit, and that I could have been given a credit on the spot. Joe gave me $50 credit over what happened today. A new appointment has been set for tomorrow from 11am-3pm. We will see.
If this doesn't get it done, I am shutting off service and switching to the cable company.
Only good news here is that I'm falling off contract in a week, so this was at least well timed.
What a fucking fail.