I used to live in area serviced by Qwest. I thought their tech support was bad, but I’ve come to appreciate them more, because their tech support people actually listen to what you’re saying. With Verizon, you might as well be reading off their communication script yourself because anything not on that script is either rebuffed or just flatly ignored.
Me: “I’d like to report a DSL outage.”
Verizon: “OK, thank you for calling, I can help you with that. What operating system is your computer?”
Me: “Um.. (Did she not hear me?) Sorry, I would like to report a DSL outage.”
Verizon: “OK yes sir, I can definitely help you with that. What operating system is your computer?”
Me: “I’m sorry, there must be something wrong with your connection. Can you hear me?”
Verizon: “Yes, I can hear you fine.”
Me: “I would like to report a DSL outage. Is this the repair department?”
Verizon: “Yes you’ve reach the Verizon DSL repair department. I can certainly help you with your DSL outage problem. Before we begin I need to know what operating system your computer is.”
Me: “Macintosh.”
Verizon: “OK, can you please hold?”
Four minutes later…
Verizon: “I’m sorry, I can’t help you with Macintosh.”
Me: “I don’t think you heard what I said earlier. My DSL is out. It is not a configuration problem. It was working fine until 7AM this morning. I made no configuration changes. Nothing changed. It is not my computer. The DSL is out. I just need to report to someone that it is out, and then I will hang up.”
Verizon: “Sorry, I can’t help you if you have a Macintosh. Please hold and I will forward you to another department.”
Me: “PLEASE listen to what I’m saying. The little DSL light on my DSL modem is OUT. That means the problem is on your end. It is not my computer. Can you please file a repair ticket?”
Verizon: <type type type> “I’m sorry sir but no one else in your area has reported an outage.”
Me: “Can I be the first?”
This went on for about 15 minutes. Finally I caved, told her I had a PC and let her walk me through the typical reboot modem crap that I already of course tried several times.
After about 45 minutes she told me that the modem was the problem and that I would need to be sent a new modem. At this point I had had enough and politely hung up. She called right back, insisting it was the modem, and I got pretty angry with her for wasting my time.
It hurts to be right. This morning I woke up and the DSL light was back on and it’s all working fine again. Nothing in the modem configuration ever changed… I want that hour of my life back please.
Hi,
i am a tech associate of verizon HSI
My name is Keshav..
well!
I am sorry for that hour which you lost Mr. Rose and even god can not give that hour back..
The things which you fail to do is ,
1>You had reach to windows tech support, and if she has taken that information and she did not have you transferred the Mac dept she might have lost her job in the next minute
as a matter of fact i am also working in the windows tech support
**before explaining about the second thing let me just informed . that i am not aware of Mac at all
2> well in the second scenario when your call reached the second associate, (s)he might not found that you are part of a any outage as outages gets release near about every hour and they get updated in india after some more time once it is confirmed as well as you said that your internet got fixed at the second day…
3> there might be some sort of technical issue was getting solved and that must be from the same area as the maintainence guy was working there then he might have stop the stack of 10 – 20 customers of the same stack
4>This went on for about 15 minutes. Finally I caved, told her I had a PC and let her walk me through the typical reboot modem crap that I already of course tried several times.
>>> why this , what happens is first we take information about the customer’s equipment and run an initial line test , then we ask the customer to powercycle the modem just to check that is modem alright or customer needs another modem , if everything goes right we follow the troubleshooting steps
why we ask to powercycle is because customers never turn their modem off because in america they dont have a special switches for it as i know they have only one switch for one room if i am not wrong
so in that case they can unplug power cable of the modem (or on/off switch of the modem) every time they turn their computer’s off correct?
thats all!!
if you got any general issues you can download”Vz in home agent” and it will help you to solve the issue ,
and in general if you see that your dsl is blinking that means your modem is not synchronised with the Central office that time you need to contact the tech support
thank you for sharing a valuable experience rather a counter with dsl tech support
Verizon Internet is the WORST i’ve ever had.
So far, I have to say that I HATE Verizon’s customer support.
I much prefer Sonic.net; however, because our area is serviced by Verizon and not AT&T, I can’t get them here.
Here is my experience so far with Verizon:
Our internet went out about 10 AM yesterday according to my wife.
I first tried chatting with tech support when I got home yesterday. They disconnected me when I told them I use a Mac.
So, I called them, they said they would have to send a technician out the next day (they didn’t even run any tests on their side, nor did they reset the line like most other DSL providers do BEFORE sending a technician since these options cost no money and sending a tech out costs money).
The technician calls me at 5 to tell me that the problem is on their end and that it will be fixed soon. Oh, and it took about 30 minutes for tech support to answer the phone.
So, here it is about 9 PM and I call back to check on the status to find out that my account has been suspended for some unknown reason, even though it is paid in full (it’s on AutoPay or whatever they call it).
I have now been on hold waiting for the guy that is supposed to fix this for about 20 minutes after he said hold on just a minute.
Experience with Sonic.Net tech support (we use them at work and have had both personal and business accounts with them and both are treated the same):
Mind you I have only had to call a handful of times, but most of the time they answer with a live technician on the second ring.
I did have to wait 2 minutes once, when all of southern california had a DSL outage (all companies). I think that’s reasonable.
The problem was almost always resolved within 15 minutes. There was once when it wasn’t, because when AT&T was working on neighboring office, they messed up some wiring and so they had to come back out to fix it and it took them a couple hours to get there.
Whenever there is a major issue like this, they usually would give a credit automatically of at least a month. Verizon has given me 10 days and I had to fight to get that.
So, now you can see the difference:
Verizon: Going on 36 hours without internet and 3+ hours on the phone/chat.
Sonic.net: Average time to fix: 15 minutes (2 hours max.) with about 5 minutes on the phone.
Niether company has bandwidth caps and Sonic actually has refused to put any in place, even on their new gigabit internet service. (Priced at $70 per month for home use).
I don’t mean for this to be an ad for sonic; however, I believe that it is appropriate to point out the fundamental differences here.