I am about to jump ship
rickgnyc
Newbie

I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with the level of service I am getting from Verizon/FIOS. I can only imagine that their customer base has grown beyond their ability to maintain quality, and I am prepared to return to Time Warner, who has more experience managing a large TV customer base in Manhattan.

I have been trying to get through the finale of Top Chef Masters HD On Demand. At first I was annoyed that I couldn't fast forward. I could pause and rewind, but not fast forward. If I stopped the show, and then tried to "resume", it would start from the beginning. I thought that this was a problem with Verizon's servers for while, but then I noticed that the finale episode also had full commercials, whereas the previous on demand episodes had abbreviated commercials. Then, I also noticed that the info screen for that particular episode had an inverted red triangle icon (next to the TV14, HD, and NEW icons). I began to suspect that this icon signifies that this is a special On Demand episode, which can't be fast forwarded, however other posts seem to indicate that the triangle means that the show is only available for a limited time.

I called FIOS customer support, which was depressing. The poor fellow was limited to by-rote assistance, and couldn't even tell me what the triangle means. He also misdirected me through my DVRs menus as if he was completely unfamiliar with them. After he had me unplug everything so he could reboot my system, he told me to press "B" on my remote to search for Top Chef, so I could get back to the episode and try the fast forward again, however the search he was having me do was for finding programs in the channel lineup, not On Demand. I was embarrassed for both of us as I gently explained this.

Based on other posts I've seen here, it sounds like some shows prevent fast forwarding due to legal agreements with the content providers. This would make sense in the case of the finale of Top Chef, which originally aired only 3 days ago, but why the heck couldn't the support rep tell me that? If that's true, then why isn't this limitation clearly displayed on the show's info screen? I'll tell you why - because the DVR software is TERRIBLE. The design, information architecture; basically everything about the software is a tragedy.

I am Director of Technology for one of the worlds biggest companies, and I am fairly well connected. One of the best programmers I know in the NYC market has recently gone to work for the competition helping them develop the next version of their set-top software. I am already tempted to jump ship over the terrible FIOS software implementation, and now that I know what the competition is working on, I am even more compelled.

I remain a FIOS customer by the thinnest of threads. The fast internet speed coupled with the fact that my co-op building has a bulk discount with Verizon are the only reasons I'm still a customer. If Verizon doesn't soon improve their systems, I'm out. Indeed, just signing up for this forum had my blood boiling, as it wouldn't recognize my MyVerizon user ID and password at all, and I had to create a separate account just for this forum - and the process for doing even that was horrifically buggy.

I'm fuming (as you can tell). All because I had to re-watch the first half of that darned finale twice, and then I made the mistake of pausing it while answering the phone - leading it to time out after 3 minutes. And I was cautious to un-pause and re-pause to prevent this, but was too slow the last time. I know it's only a TV show; fair enough, but the poor customer service, and then my experience on this website only served to aggravate further.

Enough said...

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Re: I am about to jump ship
armond_in_nj1
Master - Level 1

@rickgnyc wrote:

My previous post (having had the same subject line) was removed by the moderator because I had already posted the exact same text as a response within another thread. I have since removed my original reponse in the other thread to prevent cross-posting. Here is my original message:

 

I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with the level of service I am getting from Verizon/FIOS. I can only imagine that their customer base has grown beyond their ability to maintain quality, and I am prepared to return to Time Warner, who has more experience managing a large TV customer base in Manhattan.

I have been trying to get through the finale of Top Chef Masters HD On Demand. At first I was annoyed that I couldn't fast forward. I could pause and rewind, but not fast forward. If I stopped the show, and then tried to "resume", it would start from the beginning. I thought that this was a problem with Verizon's servers for while, but then I noticed that the finale episode also had full commercials, whereas the previous on demand episodes had abbreviated commercials. Then, I also noticed that the info screen for that particular episode had an inverted red triangle icon (next to the TV14, HD, and NEW icons). I began to suspect that this icon signifies that this is a special On Demand episode, which can't be fast forwarded, however other posts seem to indicate that the triangle means that the show is only available for a limited time.

I called FIOS customer support, which was depressing. The poor fellow was limited to by-rote assistance, and couldn't even tell me what the triangle means. He also misdirected me through my DVRs menus as if he was completely unfamiliar with them. After he had me unplug everything so he could reboot my system, he told me to press "B" on my remote to search for Top Chef, so I could get back to the episode and try the fast forward again, however the search he was having me do was for finding programs in the channel lineup, not On Demand. I was embarrassed for both of us as I gently explained this.

Based on other posts I've seen here, it sounds like some shows prevent fast forwarding due to legal agreements with the content providers. This would make sense in the case of the finale of Top Chef, which originally aired only 3 days ago, but why the heck couldn't the support rep tell me that? If that's true, then why isn't this limitation clearly displayed on the show's info screen? I'll tell you why - because the DVR software is TERRIBLE. The design, information architecture; basically everything about the software is a tragedy.

I am Director of Technology for one of the worlds biggest companies, and I am fairly well connected. One of the best programmers I know in the NYC market has recently gone to work for the competition helping them develop the next version of their set-top software. I am already tempted to jump ship over the terrible FIOS software implementation, and now that I know what the competition is working on, I am even more compelled.

I remain a FIOS customer by the thinnest of threads. The fast internet speed coupled with the fact that my co-op building has a bulk discount with Verizon are the only reasons I'm still a customer. If Verizon doesn't soon improve their systems, I'm out. Indeed, just signing up for this forum had my blood boiling, as it wouldn't recognize my MyVerizon user ID and password at all, and I had to create a separate account just for this forum - and the process for doing even that was horrifically buggy.

I'm fuming (as you can tell). All because I had to re-watch the first half of that darned finale twice, and then I made the mistake of pausing it while answering the phone - leading it to time out after 3 minutes. And I was cautious to un-pause and re-pause to prevent this, but was too slow the last time. I know it's only a TV show; fair enough, but the poor customer service, and then my experience on this website only served to aggravate further.

Enough said...


Unfortunately I wasn't able to spend time reading this entire post, but I certainly agree with the final paragraph.  Hope you get your issue(s) resolved.

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Re: I am about to jump ship
marc35655
Contributor - Level 1

Apparently... if you use STOP instead of PAUSE you won't have this problem.

http://forums.verizon.com/t5/FiOS-TV-Technical-Assistance/On-Demand-won-t-quot-resume-quot-play-only...

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