terrible outages in PA
uw1984pa
Newbie

Im typing this on a mobile phone, because my DSL has been down for 2 days and in generally unsatisfactory condition for about a month.

It all started at the beginning of august, when my connection was going on and off at a rate of 3x per hour. After several days of this, i finally called support. After a grueling session, i was finally transferred to and told by a network engineer that he could see equipment for my area restarting itself. He said he needed to call central in MD to have our 'equipment replaced with newer stuff'. Commence 2 days of total outage.

After about 2 weeks i noticed my internet was very slow. A look at the modem settings showed a dsl line rate of about half of what i pay for (notice that others in the forum have the same issue). An internet speed test confirms reduced rate. I call support again. They create a ticket to 'fix my line', my internet goes down for 2 more days, total outage.

This brings us to today. My line speed as indicated by the modem is finally back to the 3.5m/768k i pay for. However, still no ppp connection. I call support again. After another session of hoop jumping, i am told theres an outage in my area which is pittsburgh, pa... right in the middle of the city. If thats true, there must be a lot of angry people. I am told repair will take 24-48 hours, putting the total outage for this month at up to 6 days. I'm paying for this? Reading these forums, i see others in the same area also dealing with this terrible service.

Thanfully im moving soon...i will NOT be continuing with verizon dsl. The worst part of this experience is the hours spent waiting on hold and dealing with tech support. Each call, of which my situation required about 5, was a 45 minute affair listening to bad 8-bit music, followed by a dehumanizing transfer to india where i was made to repeatedly jump through the hoops of restarting my modem; checking my anti virus; answering questions about filters; making sure my cat5 cable was official verizon cable (lol cause thats the problem)...and the list goes on. Even though each tech support agent could clearly see an open repair ticket that pointed to recent hardware trouble on verizons side -written by a fellow tech employee-, and my explanation that i had already done all the trivial checks, i was still treated like a naive retiree who just couldnt keep malware off my computer. Every single time, the diagnosis was a verizon hardware problem....the best part of it is that verizon's idea of closing a repair ticket means fixing the problem by introducing a new one.

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Re: terrible outages in PA
Anthony_VZ
Master - Level 3

I am sorry to hear about the troubles with your DSL service. Since a few days have past are you still having troubles with the service? Please reply back if so that way we can be of assistance.

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Re: terrible outages in PA
uw1984pa
Newbie

I'm replying mainly as a service to other customers who may have similar problems (and it looks like many do). Thanks for checking up Anthony, you seem to be the only one at Verizon that cares.

I finally got my internet back after a 5 day outage. This brings the tally to 7 total days of outage for this month. The total days of constant 3x/hr dropouts was 3. The total days of internet half-speed of what I pay for was 14. I'm sure verizon is willing to pro-rate my billing to the 5 dollars of service I got (yea right). 

I had to endure another 1.5 hour session with india to surmise what happened. The outage in Pittsburgh only lasted 2 days (only...). The other 3 days of consecutive outage I recieved were the result of a botched repair on the line rate I wrote about previously down at Central, and the invariable foot dragging to rectify the problem. The problems masked one another, and nobody at verizon did the due diligence of checking up other than saying "412 area had an outage, its fixed now, therefore his internet must be fixed...ticket closed." Of course this whole snafu is the result of propagating errors, based on ancient network equipment, incompetent installation of new equipment, and refusal to incorporate information from knowledgeable users in the reporting process. 

The punch line? Despite the fact that I have turned my modem off for 30 seconds and then back on at least 200 times, it has never once resolved any problems.

Heres my serious suggestion for customer service. Bring back the network status so we can see if our area is in an outage. Secondly, EXPEDITE reporting of outages. Lastly, if the user tells an agent that he has restarted the modem, can see the PPP stats, and really doesnt have a virus, give the agents the power to stop reading from the script and excercise some intelligence. Not everyone that calls is mentally handicapped. You'll save on time wasted, repair your horrible reputation and perhaps mitigate customers like myself from jumping ship to comcast.  

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Re: terrible outages in PA
Anthony_VZ
Master - Level 3

I am very sorry to hear about your time without service. We do want to make sure and followup that you get those credits. I have copied your post to the private support board to get your account information. Please check the email you used to signup for the forums to get the link for it.

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Re: terrible outages in PA
Anthony_VZ
Master - Level 3

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

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Re: terrible outages in PA
Theresa100
Enthusiast - Level 3

Anthony_VZ, Sorry for intruding on this conversation, but I have been having similar problems to uw1984pa, and many others on this site. I am wondering, after reading your responses, what a Private Support Board might be? In the last 3 weeks, we have called normal tech support (India), and received a new modem, a tech visit, supposedly a splicer working on the lines, and for the last 8 days have spoken with normal tech support (India) almost every day. These conversations last 1-2.5 hours, and generally culminate in absolutle nothing being fixed.

So, is the Private Support Board for those who are finally so irate that they are ready to cancel service? Is it only for certain packages? Or do I need to write this last episode in detail on these boards to finally speak with someone who might know how to address my issues?

Theresa

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Re: terrible outages in PA
Anthony_VZ
Master - Level 3

Theresa,

     This is a peer to peer help forum. There are however issues that other peers can not assist with that only a Verizon tech can. In those instances, we require the customers information to assist further. This is where the private support board comes in. When we move a customers message thread to the private support board, only the customer and us Verizon agents are able to see it. I have copied your post to our private support board. Please refer all correspondences to there from here on out. You can easily get to the private support one of two ways. In the email you signed up for the forums with, you will receive a link to click on. Make sure you are already signed into the forums before clicking on this link. Another way of getting there is by clicking on your username anywhere you see it in the forums. This brings you to your account profile. Scroll down to the section labeled "My Support Cases" . In there you will see the link to your case.

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Re: terrible outages in PA
Reann2
Newbie

Dido to everything said here by customers.  Took me about 15 minutes to just get here to post. I have been a customer for years but as soon as I can afford it I am not going to be a customer anymore.   It will cost me more money to get another provider but at least I will have internet that works!!  Very disappointed in VERIZON !!!!!  And Verizon ... would it kill you to have call centers in this country so maybe you could actually resolve issues and employee people in this country.   

VERY UNSATISFIED CUSTOMER

Reann

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Re: terrible outages in PA
Anthony_VZ
Master - Level 3

We can definitely assist with the problems you are having. We apologize that it has caused this much problems. We would hate to see you leave and would like to help out. So we can get more information from you, I have copied your post to our private support board. Please refer all correspondences to there from here on out. You can easily get to the private support one of two ways. In the email you signed up for the forums with, you will receive a link to click on. Make sure you are already signed into the forums before clicking on this link. Another way of getting there is by clicking on your username anywhere you see it in the forums. This brings you to your account profile. Scroll down to the section labeled "My Support Cases" . In there you will see the link to your case.

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Re: terrible outages in PA
TonyaD_VZ
Contributor - Level 3

We sent you a message on our private support board to assist you and we did not receive a response.  Please repost the issue if you are still experiencing a problem so that we may assist you.  Tonya C.

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