No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
irbrenda
Contributor - Level 1

I am writing this on behalf of my 84 year old mother in Brooklyn who has been without landline service for the past 5 weeks or so. Her line has had static and after calling for service on several occasions, the technician said he could not gain access to the utility pole which is located in a neighbor's yard 2 doors down.  These are attached row houses.  The neighbor has a vengeance against Verizon and has slammed the door in their face on more than one occasion.  They refuse to admit them into her yard.   Therefore, Verizon said the only way to regain service would be for my mother to switch to FIOS.  I have a case filed with the Public Service Commission and her local congressman.  And at this point I am ready to file a lawsuit.

There were so many FIOS installation dates set up for her between 2 to 6 weeks away, no one gave us the correct date,and we finally argued that she lives alone, is not well, and other than her cell phone which is difficult for her to use in the first place, she needs her phones back ASAP.  Finally, her install date was moved up to this past Friday, Oct. 7th.

The tech came,, said he did his part of her TV installation,  but said he needed the neighbor's yard to do the phone service.  Well, here we go again, she refused admittance and we were back in Square One! 

The Tech called for help and another tech came and they decided to install the FIOS on a different pole.  My mother questioned and tried to understand why this wasn't done in the first place and I tried to explain to my mother that copper is no longer used, and she was getting fiber optic wiring now and blah blah blah.  She didn't understand much.

9 hours later, the tech finished and said, "I'm so sorry. I cannot get the telephone to work.  I cannot get a dial tone.  My work is done, the rest is up to Verizon on their end.  The trouble seems to be them, not you.  No one has to come anymore.  The work is from their office.  I can't stay here any longer to get your phone working.  I'm not paid for my overtime (b.s.) You will have service by 7:15pm tomorrow night."  haha  Right.

Needless to say, nothing happened Saturday.  I called and there was no open trouble ticket.  They said the tech CLOSED the matter. He should have left it OPEN but someone closed it.    I then spoke to FIOS and they said  they'd have the problem fixed by Sunday,  today.  Well, no one has shown up.  I called and was told it's now Tuesday, and FIOS was going to have to redo the entire installation and troubleshoot again. This just can't be possible. 

There have been at least 50 calls since early September til now, which I won't go into, back and forth, with so many mixed messages, so many promises, so many lies, so many excuses, that I have now decided I am calling the Mayor's office on Tuesday to find out where we go from here.   Does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing here??   How do we get telephone service back?   I just hope she doesn't have any real emergency because no one can really reach her.  Truly a disgrace.

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Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
irbrenda
Contributor - Level 1

After finally contacting the Consumer Advocate's offices in NYC, I had a personal call from their offices and my issue was immediately looked into, sent to an escalation team, and resolved Thursday afternoon.  The person I dealt with was outstanding and I commended her in a written letter to her superior. 

However, by Friday, I ran into a new issue......they connected her new digital voice phone but disconnected her FIOS TV premium package and my mother just had standard TV channels.  I had to fight with billing for nearly 2 hours for them to see she had ordered nearly every premium channel.  Took 3 hours to get her services reinstated!  Whew!!!! Hope this ends our issues.

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Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
KaLin
Khoros Partner
Khoros Partner

I'm sorry to hear about your recent issue.  I've copied your message to an employee monitored board, where a Verizon representative can assist you. You will be contacted by email, private message in the Forums and/or the billing telephone number on your Verizon account as soon as possible.

Thank you for your participation in the Verizon Forums!


KaLin

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Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
irbrenda
Contributor - Level 1

Well, thank you but I called Verizon this morning only to find out they DISCONNECTED service on my mother's phone after all this time.  No one knows what happened and now there is no phone service to be fixed.  They have an order to disconnect her FIOS TV service too for tomorrow.  I have been on the phones all morning with FIOS Customer support, FIOS Tech support, etc., and after several technicians and transfer after transfer, there is no help or solution to my mother's situation.  We are still getting story after story with each tech we speak to.  Does anyone know why her phone number is now disconnected????  Where do we turn to now???? 

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Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
irbrenda
Contributor - Level 1

Well, since stories have been changing everytime we call Verizon, I have contacted the FTC, the NYS Attorney General's Office, Ivan Seidenberg's office - Verizon's Chairman/CEO as far as I know, and the Brooklyn Borough President's office.  My mother has no phone, no phone number after 35 years, no sign of pending service, and an order to disconnect her newly installed FIOS TV!  Thanks, Verizon, for no customer support for an 84 yr old sick senior!

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Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
Travis_VZ
Contributor - Level 2

Good afternoon! Let me apologize for the experience you've had, first and foremost. I want to help you resolve this matter as quickly as possible. I've sent you a PM so we can get some more information and work on this.

Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
abbyten
Newbie

Do any of your local TV stations have something like what one of ours calls 12 On Your Side? If people have problems like this the station (REPORTERS) will investigate and will usually get action. Of course, it also is a story on the local news. These kinds of stories really do affect businesses and can get lots of things done.  We have one station with a reporter who handles these things exclusively. He lives for this stuff. 

I've seen amazing results. Big (or small) companies do not like this kind of thing aired. It hurts their image.  Try calling any of the reporters or emailing them at any of the stations (normally all) in your area that do this kind of investigation. I've never seen it not work yet. 

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Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
irbrenda
Contributor - Level 1

After finally contacting the Consumer Advocate's offices in NYC, I had a personal call from their offices and my issue was immediately looked into, sent to an escalation team, and resolved Thursday afternoon.  The person I dealt with was outstanding and I commended her in a written letter to her superior. 

However, by Friday, I ran into a new issue......they connected her new digital voice phone but disconnected her FIOS TV premium package and my mother just had standard TV channels.  I had to fight with billing for nearly 2 hours for them to see she had ordered nearly every premium channel.  Took 3 hours to get her services reinstated!  Whew!!!! Hope this ends our issues.

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Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

I'm surprised that you had to go through all of that just to get telephone service back. While FiOS is nice, you just need to ensure the power isn't out for extended periods of time if your mother happens to have corded phones. Of course, if all she has are cordless this point might be moot anyways. FiOS has been dependable for a ton of people, so it shouldn't fail her.

I'm also surprised as to why Verizon wasn't able to get to the pole in which they have a right of way to. While the neighbor probably was very upset at Verizon over something, in most areas a person cannot deny a Utility (Verizon) access to the easement/poles in which the particular utility owns. If you try to fight the utility that has an easement you're bound to lose every time for as long as they are operating within the easement. Outside of the easement, yes the Utility must ask permission. Now, it depends on the municipality but I know this is the case in my area, and is probably the case in all of the New York City Boroughs as well. Sure, if the utility messes things up you can go after them to get it repaired, but you can't block them from getting to their network. In this case, you could have gotten the neighbor to shape up and stop hassling Verizon and neighbors by not letting them access the pole. The alternate pole was always an option, as it seems to be for FiOS, but honestly they didn't need to go through that.

Re: No home phone for 6 weeks.....does anyone at Verizon care anymore???
trizi01
Newbie

Sadly, I am not surprised at all and no, Verizon does not care at all.  I have been a Verizon customer for over 20 years and have always been their biggest cheerleader. No matter how many offers cable made to me I refused to leave Verizon.  Since May, my phone Verizon service has gone out 6 times, one time they left me without service for 27 days.  It was finally resolved to go out 2 more times after that, each for 48 hours.  Let's not even get into how it happens at work at least once a month also and they have no problem leaving a business with no phones for multiple days - nothing is ever a priority.  It has become an ongoing joke with my friends and family but it is actually embarrassing to keep telling people I have no phone AGAIN.  It's not like I live/work in the middle of nowhere, we're talking about NYC. 

I have become totally disgusted with the lack of customer service that I am finally saying good-bye to Verizon and I'm really not happy about it.  I have 2 more days of wondering if my phone/DSL is working when I get home, then I am done.  C'mon Verizon, it's not rocket science. These are phone lines that continue to have the SAME problem...too bad you don't care enough to resolve it and now it's time to say bye-bye.

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being charged for long distance and have been calling for almost a year without issue resolved
Williek4
Newbie

I have been charged for long distance for almost a year, matter fact feb of this year will make a year, i have the freedom package and all blocks have or suppose to have been put on the account  so that this does not happen.  I have had to call every single month and every time i call i get the same answer that we have fixed the issue and when i get the bill same issue and they even sent a letter saying the phone was going to be disconnected if not paid ....I have talked to supervisors and begged for this to be fixed but not fixed is there anyone that can tell me what to do i have emailed and written letters begging for help but no reply or same reply we are fixing the issue Mr, Keene....

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