Verizon FIOS - Good Thing??

This past fall our neighborhood was wired up for Fiber from Verizon FIOS. After completion they started their door-to-door sales.

Now granted; I changed telephone service from Verizon 4 years ago to Cavalier Telephone. Primarily because Verizon had turned into the GIANT telephone company and they controlled the rates of phone service. To my surprise some smaller local telephone companies started cropping up offering a very robust service with DSL. This also included long distance calling, call waiting, caller id, voice mail and every other service known to telephone man. Many of those extras I didn't need, but the value of the plan I selected was well worth the move. Not only was the deal a good price, but customer service was excellent. You could call Cavalier Telephone and get a person, which was really nice.

So 4 years later and no problems with Cavalier, I decided to take my chances and sign up for Verizon FIOS. Much to my dismay - the customer service was less than adequate. It started off great but in a nutshell I signed up on 12/7/08, the lines were buried to the house on 12/17/08 and after that was when the troubles began. In keeping in the loop on the progress I noticed that the online order status for my phone order was not progressing as quickly as the TV and Internet order - which, by the way, was their Triple Freedom package. As we neared the date of installation I began to grow very concerned about the phone order and called on a daily basis - each time was told by different parties that DSL would or would not be a problem on my existing Cavalier service for porting the number. On the day prior to the installation I called to confirm the next day with thumbs up from Verizon and to expect a technician between 8am-12pm. So I stayed home on the 21st; 1pm came and NO tech. So I called Verizon to find that the phone porting was causing a problem and they had to cancel the visit. Now you would have thought that someone would call - nope! So I was told that I needed to re-order the services, but this time separately (this after multiple calls over the weekend). So finally a new order for TV/Internet was made with a separate order for Phone Service with an eventual merge of the three into one package! New date of 12/29/07 was scheduled, so again I call daily to find out if they have openings for installation to find out on the evening of 12/28/07 they automatically cancelled the order for TV/Internet and I would have to re-order again. By the time I was done with getting this info and being placed in the Ordering queue I got an agent on the phone and discussed my dilemma. She was getting ready to place the order and put me on hold, but inadvertently transferred me to the Fiber Solutions Center who had no idea a new order was being made and - oh by the way - can't transfer me back because they close at 6pm and it was past that hour, so I'd have to call on Monday. I managed to find another phone number 888-GET-FIOS and place the order through their nationwide ordering center, now with a date of 1/23/08. So I call throughout the weekend to learn that a problem exists and existed on the prior order. Finally it was cleared on Monday and the date was still 1/23/08, but managed to get a supervisor to get 1/5/08 for an install. Since the holidays were a factor, I called a customer relations number that assist customers or new customers with unresolved issues that have been escalated to a manager. Of course no one logged my issue and I spoke with plenty of managers or supervisors. The call went in on Wednesday morning (1/2/08) and I got a return call around mid morning with a resolution to have 2 technicians install my service by the afternoon. They arrived when I got home and were finished in 2 -3 hours; with no major problems.

In the end the customer relation office came through and they even offered me 2 months free service.

Now I just have to deal with the phone order - I'm sure more will come out of that. And it will be interesting to see how they handle the merging of the three services into the bundle AND if I will get the free HDTV (19") out of this whole fiasco.

See my follow-on for more information and certainly my detailed phone dialog from 12/7/07 until 1/2/08. Amazing how it takes soooo long for things to happen because no one seems to want to try and resolve problems at the level in which it should be taken care of! Their was no need to get this escalated - but their you have it - they are so big that they are just not connected. Imagine that - the largest telephone company providing communications and they don't communicate among themselves.