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I am located in a suburb north of Boston. Having recently relocated from Seattle to MA I was pretty excited to learn I could finally ditch Comcast. Truly was looking forward to this day especially having read all of the great reports about FiOS and supposedly high levels of satisfaction customers were having. But mostly was just excited to never give another dime to Comcast ever again.
It has been nice experiencing a somewhat modern set-top box experience compared to the late 90's GUI comcast still ships their standard customers. Admittedly the box can be a little slow to respond, and the whole "required router" setup is pretty obnoxious, but those are relatively minor annoyances. Nice little extras like a free movie when we signed up, weekend promotions, and relatively fair pricing have also made me feel better about paying my monthly bill.
What is killing me is the Netflix experience. Obviously this is nothing new with all the press coverage it's getting. But the amount of time it is taking to do the supposed upgrades is truly unnacceptable. At the end of the day I am paying Verizon and I am paying Netflix - and I am NOT receiving the service at an acceptable level. What makes matters worse is Verizon is not proactive about reaching out to the communities most affected (i.e. Boston area). Verizon is well aware customers are suffering while they battle it out with content and network providers instead of talking ot their customers.
I'm currently pricing things out with Comcast and DirectTV. I will likely be able to get the same pricing if I promise to switch. Glad I didn't sign a multi-year contract. Shame on you Verizon for spending all of your energy fighting to save margin while not communicating or trying to remedy the situation with a short term solution, whether it is paying for extra connections through other network providers (which don't have a lead time I don't think) or via customer credits joint-funded by Netflix and yourself.
Rant over. Verizon is just another service provider with horrible customer service trying to pump every last dollar out of their customers. This is the realty of the ISP/Cable industry that everyone should just come to expect.