Share Your Ideas with Verizon

[#1]

During a recent local outage I spent quite some time diagnosing and troubleshooting. It would be nice, and customer oriented, to have a conspicuous link for communicating information on outages. Brighthouse has this customer feature.

Note to Verizon upper management: having such a link does not indicate to the customer that Verizon is not reliable, but rather that the customer can be assured if/when an outage does occur they can quickly locate information specifying details of the outage and what to expect. This should serve to strengthen Verizon's incident reporting management efforts. Certainly it would make for better customer relations.

[#2]

Agree 100%.

[#3]

Great idea

[#4]

I am long time Verizon customer.  The current system of customer service is terrible.  With all the tech it should be instantly corrected.  I have been waiting for 10 days to have someone drive by and check the connection.  Sad.

[#5]

Every other ISP that I have worked with since the mid-1980's had a network status page of call in number.  Where is yours?

I have Verizon FIOS for Business, and I just spent nearly 2 hours trying to diagnose a Verizon network issue.  Most of the time was spent either on hold with Verizon tech support, or talking with tech support agents who were uninformed, or getting bumped to yet another support number.  The last one dropped me into business billing -- for a network outage.  None of this would have been necessary if you just had a network status page (I could get to it on my althernate service -- Brighthouse -- or via my AT&T data plan).  Unfortunately, there is no such publically accessible Verizon FIOS network status page.  Why not!!!!!  You are wasting my time and Verizons.  

[#6]

I spent 40+ minutes on a web-chat session this morning with VZ tech support that ended in him scheduling a tech to come and take a look at our ourtage sometime from 8am - 5pm... in 3 days.   My wife, happened to see a VZ truck parked up the block when walking home from taking the kids to school.  Her 30 second converation with that tech reveals there is a block wide outage, they're waiting on a replacement wire, should be fixed by 8pm.

You would think VZ has better things to spend their money on then having their support people provide 40 minutes of wasted time on a completely unnecessary call.   Even PSE&G seems to grasp this, so its not just a dumb quasi-monopoly can't figure out basic customer service issue.  It seems to be a very specific to VZ problem.

How is it that a company that is built on Communications Technology can't get this right?

[#7]

I have run many large organizations including banks. One of the most critical aspects of my oversight was to ensure my clients knew the status of our company through web communications. You would think that Verizon, itself in the business of communications would have used that opportunity to contact thousands of customers affected by the power outage we experience in the National Capital Region on June 29-30, 2012. You have our home phone, cell phones, TV and could have easily pushed a text, or some other message via the internet to all of us explaining the network was down. Taken a step further, and reference to California where I lived previously with the many earthquakes, having a power outage meant we could rely on the cell phones as a method to communicate emergencies. However, from 11 AM on the 29th of June to about 1 PM EDT on June 30, the TV, land lines and cell phone network were all down. It would seem that the political center of the world would have a backup plan should all of these go down. Again, my emphasis would be to address this issue with a statement to your clients. No one expects you to survive unscathed by the significant storms we had. Just make your efforts to fix it transparent.

[#8]

I live in a condo building and others there have full connectivity (TV, phone, internet) yet I have bupkis.  Soooooo frustrating.  Service like this is why I and others are in the process of recommending to the condo board the building be wired for another provider as well.  Verizon is, sadly, currently our only option.  Lack of competition is killing me when I know that Comcast is up for my nearby neighbors that aren't in the condo community.  I have no way to call 911 or other non-emergency civil services, which I thought was a basic necessity but apparently not since I've been living without it. 

What really gets me is them asking ME if my neighbors are experiencing the same issues.  Isn't that something they can investigate?  Don't they know if their services are being utilized or if they're operational?  I realize that account information and usage of other accounts is something they may not be able to see while looking at my "account info" but it seems like that's just due to a lack of foresight or interface.  An outage map or some type of notification would be nice.  That way, I can spend my life at work where I do have TV, phone and internet instead of going home "just to see."

[#9]

I'm currently experiencing an outage of my Verizon DSL service.  It is very difficult to get any information regarding this outage, or its extant.  I suggest an online map of current outages, such as DSL service.  That way I know that Verizon is aware of the outage, the extent of the outage, and can monitor the current status.  

[#10]

Yesterday, DSL internet connectivity dropped, and after restarting my Verizon DSL modem I dialed the service number.

After spending around 10 minutes with the (probably U.S.) phone tree, completing the automated troubleshooting was told that I would be transferred to a technician.

I then spent approximately 30 minutes waiting for an ofshore (probably India) to repeat the troubleshooting and then finding that there was a fiber cut in my area.  The technician was courteous, and while I don't believe Verizon is responsible for the outage........

I believe this call could have been "resolved" within the initial phone-tree by checking reported outages against my zip code or phone number address on file.  Your automated questions "Are the lights lit" (y/n), "Are other computers in the house working?" (y/n), and then trying to ping my router (fail).  These types of outages are addressed by our power company, with an automated ETR, and even the opportunity to receive an automated call when the issue is resolved.

This would have saved me @30 minutes, and kept me out of your phone tree waiting for a live technician (that had possitively no chance of resolving the issue).

So here I sit, some 24 hours later, with no ETR and seemingly no way to obtain it without spending >30 minutes on a dial-up phone call. 

1.  Automate outage notification from phone tree.

2.  Provide website information on outage or automated recorded message with ETR information. 

Thank you.

This posting courtesy of Starbucks Wi-Fi.