The DC/MD/VA area took a hard hit with storms on 6/29/2012. The power utilities are getting beat up publicly by the government and the media. Meanwhile, Verizon cannot even tell you if you should have service or not - when you get power back. Totally clueless, the website didn't work, and the customer service lines would not connect to anyone.
I have been without TV, Internet, and landline phone - all FiOS bundled - for 4 days. Finally, after 4 days, I was able to talk to someone and made an appt for 4 days from now. After spending 30 minutes on the phone with a nice call center rep from Texas who couldn't do anything about the service. Nor could she even tell if anyone else in the neighborhood had service or not.
In this age of "advanced technology", especially with FiOS, it is amazing that service is so horrible and network awareness is so inadequate. EVEN the power utilities are better at customer service than Verizon. Seems like a good time to consider going back to cable...
yes, I sat home for 15 hours today for a repair request ticket that stated I would have a tech today. No one showed, and no one called. I took off from a new job today and I have no leave, so verizon has cost me quite a bit today. This also happened to me a couple of years ago and I swore that after the extemely poor customer service I got that I would switch to the comcast triple play, looks like I will do that this time. Verizon is by far the worst customer service ever. I can not get a live person, and the website rarely if ever works. I am pretty over this now, no better customer service than 2 years ago, it is exactly the same, no improvement. They just dont seem to care at all.
I just learned something about comcast. We don't have it in our area but a friend online has it. She was having trouble on the comcast site to get at her email as she does not use an email program. Something about needing an updated IE browser. She is clueless on computers so I told her to call comcast and have them straighten it out. She did and they charge for tech support to solve the issue with their own site and email she was told. I could not believe that. I have always had time warner and road runner email and they never charge me for tech support if I have an internet problem or something with their email. Mary
@dtmak1 wrote:... I have been without TV, Internet, and landline phone - all FiOS bundled - for 4 days. Finally, after 4 days, I was able to talk to someone and made an appt for 4 days from now ... In this age of "advanced technology", especially with FiOS, it is amazing that service is so horrible and network awareness is so inadequate. EVEN the power utilities are better at customer service than Verizon ...
We just completed an automobile trip through parts of northern Virginia, so I am aware of some of the issues that many folks there have had to endure. We constantly had to pass through areas where crews were working 24/7 to restore power and services. Even so, your complaint seems to be that Verizon is not coming back up as quickly as the electric utility you use. In fact there is little that a cable provider can do if there is no electrical power to support their service. Even once the grid is back up (and that is taking some time), there is a necessary delay while the cable company re-establishes its servers and re-provisions its entire network. There is no "turnkey" way to do this.
I'm not at all sure what else one might expect. Please elaborate.
When we had that October storm here 5 or 6yrs ago in Buffalo NY we went through the same. No power and landline phone for 5 days but we had cell service. No power meant no heat or hot water so it was freezing in our house until the temps broke. It was just such a freak storm to get all that snow and ice in October when leaves were still on the trees.
We had a gas generator running to keep the fridge and freezer going. We are towards the end of the street and the top of the street is right by the firehall on the main road and they got that section up and running right away which one would expect since the firehall is important. I would think first priority in these situations would be important stuff like hospitals and things. I know here we had to have crews come in from all over the state and other states to help get us back up and running since tree limbs took out so much. In these situations about all you can do is be patient and wait it and be thankfully no one was hurt or anything. Mary
@acraftylady wrote:... one would expect ... in these situations would be important stuff like hospitals and things ... In these situations about all you can do is be patient and wait it and be thankfully no one was hurt or anything ...
My point exactly. It seems mindless to complain that we don't have TV and so on, when the really important thing is to restore safety-related electrical services. I am pretty sure we can do without Facebook, TV, and Internet for a while (as our grandparents did with no obvious ill effects).
Well people just don't realize with a storm that big there are not enough techs in the local area to handle it all and even with sending techs from out of state they have to rotate them there is so much work. No I don't work in this industry but aftrer we went through that storm I saw all the power lines the trees brought down and how many workers around on streets dealing with it. They can't even deal with the lines until someone comes and clears the tree branches off them first of all, well that was the problems here anyway. I thought 5 days was great in our area to be up and running with things and we were very lucky we had cell phones and could charge them in the car to tell family we were ok.
Now we don't have a home phone anymore simply because we don't have a lot of calls and with son away at college it was better to just go to cells and texting. A lot of people think we are nuts for dumping the home phone and their reasoning is if there is a storm. Well we had a storm and I had no landline for 5 days but my verizon cell worked perfect so there ya go.
I tell you what else is handy, an old AM/FM battery radio. I have a small hand held one from years ago that was a giveway for the first so many when a new store opened. Never really used it but just kept it in the drawer then when the storm hit I was glad to have it to tune in to AM talk radio and see what was going on in the area.
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