The customer comes last, or Catch 22 with Verizon.

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

Tale one:
Last Monday I had to call my son early in the morning. When I picked up the phone there was no dial tone so I used a pay phone. The dial tone came back about 8:00 AM. I called Verizon to report the trouble and a helpful young lady suggested there might be a short in one of our instruments.

The same thing happened the next morning so I went around unplugging telephones one at a time while listening on another instrument. No luck. Our telephones were not the problem.

So I called Verizon again and got an unhelpful man. After I went through the history he said that if a service employee showed up and there was a dial tone at that time, I would still be charged $83 for the call. I protested and finally asked to speak to his supervisor. She confirmed to rule about paying regardless. So I asked her if someone could come around 7:00 AM. Nope, they started work at 8:00. So I couldn’t get repair service while the phone was out and would have to pay if they arrived after the phone was working. Catch 22. She was helpful however, and told me to open up the outside interface box and plug a regular telephone into the plug there. If there was no dial tone there then the problem was in the company’s lines and not in my house.

So I opened it up and there was no plug. If wasn’t built in but had to be wired in separately and the installer hadn’t done that. However, there were a lot of spider webs and junk in the bottom of the box. I got out my air compressor and a paper towel and cleaned all the junk out. The next morning everything worked just fine and it has worked ever since. I thought telephone lines were relatively low impedance and wouldn’t be bothered much by stuff like that.

So if you have an intermittent phone problem and it happens at an hour when no repair service is offered by Verizon you can’t get it fixed.

Tale two:

I decided to treat myself to a hot fudge sundae this afternoon. I went down to the Baskin-Robbins and ordered a one scoop, hot fudge sundae which was listed at $2.29 on the wall menu. I also specified no nuts and no whipped cream

When I got it the service girl fiddled around with the cash register a while and came up with a price of $2.55. I asked how we got from $2.29 to $2.55. She said, “Well, you had one scoop with topping.”

“No, I had a hot fudge sundae which is listed on the wall at $2.29.”

She finally called the shift supervisor who straightened things out and charged me the $2.29. (I grew up during the great depression and I ain’t never giving away no money, no how.)

Don’t ever ask for less, you’ll get charged more.

#2

My husband and I moved to a new home about 2 weeks ago and went through the Verizon-authored list of appropriate steps to have your service transferred. When you call our number it rings, but when you pick up the phone at home you get nada… Verizon insists that our service is connected and it is our telephone…

:mad:

#3

At least you didn’t ask Verizon to do simple math!

#4

No kidding. Try buying a computer package at Best Buy without the crappy Lexmark printer sometime.

#5

Once Rally’s or Checker’s or something had some Jalepeno Chili Cheeseburger or some such shit for 99 cents or something, and I asked if I could get it with meat and cheese only for 99 cents, and they said no, without the Jalepenos and Chili it was a regular cheeseburger, cost 1.49 or whatever. I didn’t go so far as to ask if I could get the chili and Jalapenos in a separate container, but assume that would have done the trick. So yes, I can empathize with paying more for less.

#6

In your case it wasn’t useful, but this really is a good tip. When you call to report no dial tone, you’ll always be given a song & dance about how the problem could be in your equipment in which case it’s not their fault and you’ll be charged for the service call, etc. etc. But when you say “I plugged a phone into the Network Interface Box [some nice technical jargon there] and got no dial tone”, they shut up and put you on the repair schedule.

And, of course, if the NIB has a dial tone, you know to look inside the house, and you avoid the cost of the service call.

You should ask them to replace your NIB with one that has a jack.

#7

I want to say thet the cleaning likely did nothing, and sombody else reported a failure, which when fixed fixed your phone service.

Verizon came ou into the neighborhood on a friday night. My phone went dead while he was screwing around. The neighbor putting in a pole nicked a line and lost their service and the one next door. I told him he killed my line and don’t leave until it was working. He said that he had the digging neighbors phone fixed by switcing some wires around in the box, and I would have to be without service until monday. He used the wires feeding my house to fix the hole digging asshole neighbors phone, and left me without service. What a fuckhead! On monday they ran a patch cable from one service box to the next and left it laying through the neighborhood lawns for months, during which you had to keep moving it to mow the lawn, until somebody was in the area burrying cable. I hate the utility companies in my area.

#8

I always test the used entrance jack before calling and they say in that case someone will be checking it out. The outside box is their equipment, and they should bring that up to pare at no charge.

#9

That’s certainly possible. Coincidences do happen. I was quite surprised when the trouble cleared up after cleaning out a few cobwebs, well actually a lot of cobwebs, because, as I said, the lines are pretty low impedance and shouldn’t be so sensitive.

By the way, I wasn’t intending to pit Verizon but just to report a bizzare situation where it became almost impossible to get something repaired. Of course, intermittent problems are always a bitch.

#10

I wish. I followed the automated instructions saying to do this and then tried to report my findings to the live repair phone guy. He told me that information was useless to him. :smack: Luckily I have the inside line maintenance since it turned out the be mice who had nibbled on the wires.

#11

Verizon sucks. We had DSL for two years with them. First year, no problem. Second eyear, no problem - until we moved.

We made call after call after call to get the DSL hooked up in the new place. They came. They fixed things outside. Nothing happened. We called. They talked smack to us, saying it must be something on our computers. They walked us through it step by step. Nothing. They gave us dates a week away. They came. Nothing. We threatened to cancel. They said it was something at our end, that we would have to call our landlord. We did. He couldn’t find anything. We called verizon. We threatened to cancel. They told us “give us one more weekend”. We called at the end of the weekend, when no one had called us. They said they couldnt’ do anything and we could get out of our contract for free and would we be interested in click. We hung up.

We called up Roadrunner. They had it hooked up the next day.

#12

Pizza Hut had this thing where if you ordered using their automated phone system five times, you got a free pan pizza. If you ordered not using their automated system, you were charged an extra dollar or two (this is no longer the case.)

I don’t like pan pizzas (I’m a thin and crispy man) but it was call number five and there was no way that I could figure out to have them not give me the free pan pizza without talking to a human which would have cost me extra. So it would have cost me extra to have them keep their fucking pan pizza so I just had them deliver both of them. I put the pan pizza in the fridge and then brought it to work in the morning and stuck it in the break room.

#13

When I canceled my Verizon account they sent me a refund. When I cashed the check they reported me to a collections agent. They never called or sent a letter explaining their mistake, they just sent me off to a collections agent. Had they done so, I would have returned the money.

I will never do business with Verizon again. I hold a grudge a long time.

#14

i never follow the automated instruction for long. If you act like you don’t understand what’s going on they transfer you to a real person.

I think one big problem with companies like Verizon is bureaucracy. A procedure is established that is used to handle all problems. Then along comes a problem that doesn’t quite fit the procedure and the employee lacks the authority to go beyond the established procedure.

#15

If you push two or more buttons at once, or mash the entire keypad with your palm, they often assume you suffer brain damage that’s too severe to use the automated system and they will transfer you to a live agent.