Quality of tech support
erietech
Newbie

Just got off another hour long phone call with tech support, my wife thought I was going to go ballistic on this call.

First let me give you some background, I've been a verizon dsl customer for a long time, I think it going on 8 years, last Thursday I upgraded my DSL to the highest speed offered by verizon, received the work order and was notified that it would be done by Monday june 18th.  True to their word I came home from work boom 10 Mbps down!!!!  Then Tuesday came, came home from work and slam 2.4 Mbps down. 

Called tech support and we ran through the whole shebang, power cycle modem, check filters, lines, blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada....While troubleshooting he wants me to open "My Network Places" on my computer, we need to bridge the wireless connection say's he.   Umm sorry I use Linux, and I'm directly connected to the modem, I'm not using wireless.  While we were still trouble shooting the DSL modem lost connection, I was informed they were having a regional outage.....Came back on later that night but still around 2.4 Mbps.

Received a call this morning that the regional outage was cleared, came home from work, still around 2.4Mbps.  Called tech support and this is when the fun started.  I was told the issue was on my side.  Here was the list of problems support told me I needed to fix:  1.  I should not have the DSL modem on a surge protecter.  2.  I should not have more than one computer on at the same time.  3.  I was not using a verizon supplied phone cable......

Little did she realize that she was talking to a network adminstrator, and that I've been doing networking since 1991.  The verizon supplied phone cable is what really ticked me off.

Really Verizon is this the way you treat your customers, are you hoping they will just give up and live with the issue?  Seriously she had Verizon supplied cable in her script.  Can you please explain to me how your cable is far superior than any RJ-11 I can get at Walmart, Radion Shack, or even something I can make at home with my crimpers?  Is your's produced by Monster Cable?  Shall I bring home my Fluke meter from work and test it?  Of course I will need to know what standards you have for your supplied cable.....

I explained to her that it was working fine until the outage and now it's not.  NOTHING was changed on my end.  So now I get to wait until tier 2 support contacts me in 24-48 hours......If they still say it's on my side I will simply shortwire the DSL modem down stairs at the NID, disconnect all phone lines, and run another speedtest......if it comes back around 2.4 then you will probably loose a long time customer.

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Re: Quality of tech support
JOSEm441
Specialist - Level 2
erietech sorry to hear about your issue, I had somewhat similar issue for months on end. Once I got to upper level support  they tried everyting possible short of running new copper from my home to the CO. Finally I got an snail mail saying they need to upgrade my phone and internet service to Fiber. This was all done no charge, I get 6 time faster downloads (.75 Mb/s on DSL, ~5.0 on FIOS) I would ask if they would be willing to upgrade you as they did for me. I am also a long time customer.
Just as an aside, what version of Linux do you run? I just upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 (from VISTA) and like it a lot (bit of a learing curve for a 20+ year windows guy though) 
Good luck with upper level support!  
Re: Quality of tech support
Gerard_Sr
Enthusiast - Level 3

Hi there Erie,

welcome to the area of lost causes.

In saying that I mean what is said here, like your story, which I believe is no doubt true, it ain't gonna help.

I too upgraded two years ago, every thing worked pretty good for my distance, I would occasionally get about 3.1 meg, then it got worse.

Now it's at 1.8 and they say that so long as it's above 1.0 mb I can't complain.

Gee wiz, how did it once work at 3.1 meg?

Yep, the technical bull they try to pull, it ain't worth it. I have some experience with electronics and computers, I retired a few years ago after 33 years doing tactical satellite system repair and automated test equipment repair for the government. So I do know that their "special" telephone cable is a crock of (deleted).

Next Monday the local cable company will be installing a cable modem and it will have an interface for a telephone connection. I will be porting my verizon land line number over to the cable company next week as well.

Ya can only take so much in the way of lies and incompetence. AND I have been a telephone customer since 1972, 18 years at this address and 8 with DSL.

Good luck, they may pull the same thing on you, if you get above 3 meg that's all the have to provide.

Cordially,

Gerry

Re: Quality of tech support
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

I do wish Verizon would stop giving people 3Mbps on the "highest plan" and just give people the highest speed possible on the line without killing stability. If your line was holding 10Mbps, it should be at 10Mbps, not 2.8Mbps. 3Mbps is their Bread and Butter high end speed that's been around for years (easily 7) in addition to 1.5Mbps, both are essentially useless this day and age for anything reasonably heavy on a line (video, multiple video games running, Netflix). All people stuck on remotes are provisioned at that because the remotes are not set up with the capacity to handle higher speeds without a lot of congestion taking place. In COs, congestion due to too many people having speeds higher than 3Mbps is the result of poor planning and poor equipment design (ADSL DSLAM that can't handle more than 3Mbps? Yell at your vendor for not designing gear with support for 8Mbps on each line, you pay enough for it as it is). Anything else is the nature of the copper network, which should still be maintained if FiOS isn't going to be expanded anymore.

If my contact at Verizon were able to work at the moment I'd send you his way and get your line set to 15Mbps, no questions asked, on the spot and done right. He should be in next month, hopefully. How's that sound? For the meantime I'll see if I can get someone to help you out.

As far as phone support goes, it take some time but I've gotten them to cave into what i'm asking them to do rather than to follow the support line. I always thank the agent afterwards for trusting my diagnosis and the problem gets resolved properly and promptly afterwards, however sometimes I wish they would troubleshoot the way I have to at work (a Datacenter). Turnaround for problem resolutions are in the order of minutes rather than days. If you do talk to a phone rep, demand someone with the access to adjust speeds right there on the spot if the rep doesn't have the ability to. Ask them to set the 10Mbps profile and not ask anything else. Their tools *WILL* show what package you have, but they may not show 10Mbps as being available if someone has marked the CO as "Out of Capacity" or "Ineligable." It takes 5 seconds and 15 seconds to wait to wait for the line to come back up. If they need to change your router on Verizon's end, that takes 5 seconds as well.

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