Atrocious Customer Service

[LAFGNJ]

I have not had service for my landline for 2 weeks now. I had contacted Verizon when I found I was not able to receive calls and they had scheduled a service call for a week ago Thursday. I had had a similar problem once before and told the customer service representative that this had been an "outside" problem so I shouldn't be required to take time off of work to wait for anyone. She insisted this was not the case, so I took the day off from work only to learn from the service tech that came that "this was an outside problem - someone should have told you that." OK, they didn't, the phone worked for 1 day, then the same problem. I called again.

This time a very rude Mr. Boyd told me to "unplug all the phones in the house, wait 5 minutes, then see if they work," which is exactly what Comcast tells you to do when they have no clue either. At this point, I had been on the phone for over an hour either endlessly waiting and getting disconnected or re-routed to lines that eventually disconnected, so I asked Mr. Boyd to please stay on the line while I unplugged the phones and re-plugged them in. He rudely told me "there is no way I can wait for that!" and told me I had to call back. When I did call back, the earliest scheduled maintenance was 4 days later and I "HAD to be home since it was DEFINITELY an inside issue." They forwarded my landline calls to my cell in mean time. The day before the scheduled appointment I got a call saying they "HAD to do a forced FIOS integration" - amazing since now my landline service seemed to be working, and I wanted to have someone switch my calls off of call forwarding (that hasn't happened yet). I said I didn't want FIOS, that I just wanted a technician to ensure everything was working properly now as it seemed to be. Apparently, that's an impossible request on my part, since I was told (after being on hold for over a half hour while I was at work - I couldn't call anyone back you see, because the call center only handles incoming calls) that the forced FIOS was the ONLY thing they could do to ensure service, so they scheduled me for today, Sunday between 8-12. I was told this was at no cost to me although "for some reason a charge for this keeps appearing on your bill. I can switch you to speak to someone in billing to take care of this." I was at work, in the middle of a meeting, so that wasn't the place or time, but I was "assured" I wouldn't be incorrectly charged.

At 12:15 today,  when no one showed, I called customer service and explained I needed to speak to a supervisor because I'm about to switch carriers. Put on hold. Waited...waited...disconnected. Called back, went through whole story..transferred...disconnected. Called back...repeated story...waited...waited..."We're getting to the bottom of this - someone will call you right back." Waited....waited.... half hour later I go online for a live chat. Went through whole story...boilerplate answer "I can't helpl you with this but contact our Customer Service center." Wrote that that obviously isn't getting me anywhere and that I'm ready to switch carriers. No response. So here I am now. I do customer service training and I couldn't even make up how bad Verizon customer service has been to use them as a demonstration of what NOT to do.

My request still stands - I want to speak to a supervisor to rectify my problem. I want to ensure my account is properly credited for the 13 days of phone service I haven't had, along with the forced FIOS integration that never happened, that I never wanted, and that I was never supposed to have been charged for, I want my Call Forwarding to be removed (and let's be sure I don't get charged for that either) and if my phone doesn't work again I want to switch carriers. Anyone out there from Verizon that actually reads these posts that can help or is this just another dead end?

[Anthony_VZ]

Since we haven't heard back from you in your private support case, it appears assistance is no longer required. It was our pleasure to help you out. If you need any future help with your Verizon service, please make a post here on the forums so we can assist.