Verizon FiOS (fiber optic internet service) -- opinions, please

[commasense]

@commasense

I finally have all the channels I ordered, nine days after the installation. I had spoken to at least four or five tech support people over the last week, all of whom said they’d make sure the order went through. But nothing happened. So today I asked for a supervisor right from the start. The rep I got didn’t give me a supervisor, but he seemed a little better informed than the rest of the people I had spoken to, so I let him try and, long story short, an hour and a half later everything’s good. Finally.

Hah! That’s what I thought!

It turned out that when he switched on all the channels I hadn’t been getting, all the other channels that I had been getting went away! Since then, it’s been another week of calling tech support and being told they were working on it and it should be fixed anytime and still nothing. Two weeks after installation, and I still don’t have the channels I ordered.

Everyone I have spoken with has been very friendly, polite, and concerned about the inconvenience. They’ve all seemed to think they knew what was going on and that they could fix it. But no one has. I now have a supervisor looking at the problem, but she was in meetings all day Monday, out of the office yesterday, and is supposed to be calling me back sometime today with an update. The person who called me last night (her assistant, I think, or another supervisor) repeated the oft-heard claim that the order was being processed, and should be implemented within 24 hours, but so far I’m still not getting the channels I was supposed to be getting, which now includes all the basic channels, CNN, Comedy Central, Speed, etc., that I watch a fair amount, and the HBO/MAX channels. I haven’t seen Sunday’s episode of The Sopranos, so I was really pissed to learn on David Letterman last night that Christopher was whacked.

At this point I’m seriously considering issuing an ultimatum: fix this by [date] or I’m going to cancel everything and go back to Comcast. I know it’s only TV, but I’ve spent hours on the phone with these people and they just don’t seem to be able to make their own systems work right. Very annoying.

I am going to insist on getting a credit for the first full month (or more, if they don’t fix this really soon).

[commasense]

Finally, on Friday, 17 days after being installed, all the channels I originally ordered were working. I knew it had to happen sometime, but it was frustrating as hell while it lasted. I must have made a dozen calls and spent hours on the phone talking to very polite and sympathetic customer service reps (including at least two supervisors) who couldn’t get their system to work.

I’ve told the supervisors I’ve spoken to that I expect the first month to be free to make up for the inconvenience. The last one said she could make a recommendation, but that I’d have to make a call to the billing department myself. All I can say is that they better be open to that or and even more generous compensation.

All that said, as I’ve become more familiar with the system, I’ve found more things to like. One is that when you fast forward the DVR and then press play, it automatically jumps back a minute or so to compensate for the inevitable overshooting. It’s very cool.

The recording options are more sophisticated than the Comcast box I had for a few years. I really wish it had more capacity, though.