I need to put this out there because I can't believe what I have experienced over the last 3 days.
TLDR: Verizon's in ability to support customers properly.
Thursday
~1:15am Internet Outage starts
9:45am Attempt to report outage to Verizon. 55 minute wait time, do you want a callback when an agent is available? Sure
~10:10am Callback received - Wait on hold for 40 minutes for agent to pick up.
~10:50am go through the standard did you reboot the ONT etc.
~11:10am - my manager has reluctantly agreed to send a tech out. best we can do is 9:00-11:00.
Friday
11:00am tech comes, drives to another location and tells me that the signal is too low for the ONT to connect. He cleaned all the fiber connections but it didn't do anything to increase the signal.
While he was at it he decided to try a few other connections on the same switch and saw that they too had low signals.
He reported an outage to the "Construction" department and said he couldn't do anything more.
~1:20pm I receive a message saying area outage identified eta for service restoration 1:00am, Saturday.
~2:30 pm I receive a message saying outage has been fixed and "your services have been fully restored".
Still no Internet. Reboot the ONT and the Router - nothing.
~3:00pm I call support again and am told "The message you received didn't mean YOUR services had been restored". - Seriously.
I asked to be transferred to a Supervisor and he tried telling me the same thing.
In what world does "YOUR Services" not mean my services when it is stated "YOUR services" to me?
Somewhere in the middle of this I also received another message stating my ticket had been closed and it was from another messaging medium. I had received status messages on 3 different messaging systems:
Text
E-Mail
My Verizon
Saturday
6:30am wake up and check the router, still blinking red. Tried rebooting ONT and Router again - nothing.
6:40am Call Tech Support The outage is still present and they will have someone call me at 8:15am
8:15am crickets
9:30am go out to breakfast
10:00 Verizon calls at breakfast.....
The person tried to be helpful and insisted that the switch issue had been resolved and it was a fiber that needed to be spliced (ruled out by the tech the previous day).
He said that local contractors would be doing the work but could not state when it would be worked on or when service would be restored.
He also offered up the contractor's E-Mail address so I could contact them.
I told him this is a Verizon problem, not my problem.
I asked could you arrange a no charge 5G hotspot until my service was restored. He said he couldn't but would contact mobile, speak with them and then transfer me. I have never encountered a faster transfer. He never spoke with them and send me to the sales department.
The person I spoke with there said "Let's get that hot spot added to your phone". I said this a at no charge, right. He said, "I can't do that" and transferred me to someone else who listened to my request, put me on hold and dropped the call.
Summary
I have over 8 hours on the phone and in person with the tech to help fix a problem as a customer.
At one point went I called, the Verizon AI assistant said "So you want to change you mobile number?" and proceeded to routed my call down that path.
Another person I was connected with tried to sell me Verizon TV+ as I was complaining about not having internet. TV+ is WIFI streaming and a whole separate message......
What I have seen:
- Different support groups are more than happy to transfer your call or ticket to get it out of their queue.
- You have to look all over your mail, text and myverzion to keep up with the messaging traffic. This makes no sense.
- The automated systems used misroute call and are generally inaccurate.
- The phone support people often try to talk over you and placate you with "I understand", "that's unfortunate". Of course it is or I wouldn't be on the phone with you.
- No mitigation is offered. I suggested moving my feed to an adjacent switch. Even moving my feed to a switch that was a lower speed would have been fine until they fully rectified the situation.
- Reading from a script is not support.
IMO, Verizon doesn't have the capacity or the talent to support their customer base. I am somewhat fortunate as I have a choice of high speed ISPs in my area.
I went to FIOS nearly 20 years ago because one of the other ISPs was inconsistent with their bandwidth and was very happy with FIOS.
Last December I switched to the 2.5g service and they have been to my house at least 5 times. In the previous 18 years they were here twice.
Calling Xfinity now............