Verizon Fios Service is horrible
cheese1966
Newbie

Fios services is horrible I have spent over 2 hrs today and one hour Sunday trying to get my HD box fixed. They tell me the coax cable is bad, and they want to charge me a service charge and labor to come out. When they put it in last year the tech did not put in a new line and used the old one from years ago. When I was told everything was going to be replaced new. Now I am supposed to pay for installation of a new coax cable. I do not think so I will switch to Direct TV or Comcast first. I am exploring my options now. The tech told me they do not charge to pick up the equipment. What a crock of bull!

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Re: Verizon Fios Service is horrible
Shamika_VZ
Contributor - Level 3

Hello,

We can definetly assist you here. I sent you a private message to get started.

Shamika_Vz
Verizon Support

Notice: Content posted by Verizon employees is meant to be informational and does not supersede or change the Verizon Forums User Guidelines or Terms or Service, or your Customer Agreement Terms and Conditions or Plan.

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Re: Verizon Fios Service is horrible
dananap
Newbie

Has anyone found anyone useful to complain to about horrible service.  I have had only a week so far and regret changing over.  I can't even watch TV half the time.  There is no service or the screen freezes.  I have now been on hold 32 minutes and still haven't gotten through.

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Re: Verizon Fios Service is horrible
Drew024
Enthusiast - Level 2

I wanted to balance this out a bit as well as show a way that Verizon could avoid these issues to begin with.

The FiOs service is delivered right up to the house by fiber optic lines. Because the data is transmitted by laser pulses pushed along what is essentially a glass tube, there is almost no signal degradation as you would have with traditional cable or signal interruption from weather as you would have with Satellite.  That being said, once it gets to the house is where the problem usually starts. The fiber line connects to an ONT (optical network terminal) where the signal is split so that internet goes to an Ethernet cable and TV goes to a coaxial cable. (the amount of bandwidth that a fiber line can carry is far greater than anything cable or satellite could ever hope to push to your house reliably) Now with the TV service, the ONT is turning that beautiful beam of light into a Radio Signal. (what a waste but fiber directly to the TV I would guess is still some years away.) The quality of that signal when it finally arrives at a televison will be dependent on the quality of the co-axial cable as well as the length. Now when it comes to this type of RF transmission if the signal had degraded significantly by the time it gets to the TV then you will have pixelation, the picture may pop in and out, or other elements may not work correctly.  These cables are usually in your house and it can be quite expensive to replace them as well as several hours worth of work. Quite frankly, Verizon won't make any money on their services to your house if they have to fix those issues at their cost. (Of course if they have the service that also means their competition doesn't)  Now sometimes they will run a seperate brand new line on the outside of a house and then drill holes through the wall to bring a new cable into a room.

Here is where Verizon service fails.

During the install, the technician doesn't bother to check signal quality at each of the Television sets with a seperate meter. It's true that some cable boxes have a way to measure signal strength, but the hardware and software that does that is low end and only a real device designed to read RF signal should be used. If for some reason the signal is low quality, the technician should warn the customer of possible bad service, explain to them why, and offer them alternatives. They don't usually do this as it adds to the install time and requires the technician to be trained on how to use an RF meter correctly. This means more time and money spent. 

The software used in the set-top boxes is slow and non-responsive. This is not a problem with the signal, but rather with the idea that Verizon has developed a piece of software that requires more processor power than the set top boxes currently have. These STB's are essentially mini computers with a TV card in them. So if the operating system is over bloated with features, then a low end processor in the box will cause slow or sluggish response.  All the co-axial cable in my house is run over short distances and it's all provided by the verizon tech that originally installed the service so I don't suspect a signal issue there. I also have a digital converter only box provided by verizon that has no real software to speak of and the channels on those TV's change very quickly. 

Now, if you have an HD tv, then it probably already has a tuner of some kind in it. If you connect a co-axial cable directly to the televison you should be able to tune into some of the digital channels that VZ provides. Now, the channel numbers wont match up and you won't be able to get the full range of channels that VZ provides, but it can show you rather quickly if the problem is the box or the cable. 

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