My mother ordered DSL from Verizon on 10/14, approximately. After several days, nothing happened, so she called up again. Apparently, they ‘didn’t receive an order’, which is blatant crap. Then they said that we should be online on Halloween. The day after Halloween, they called and said that it would be ready last Thursday. Last Wednesday, they called and said it would be ready this Thursday. Tuesday, they called and said it was ready then. I tried installing the CD, but at the part where it says “Processing… We are now testing your configuration. This may take several minutes…”, it just never stops processing. Today I let it run for over an hour, and nothing happened. I checked the website, and it said that we should have DSL tomorrow after 6.
GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASSES AND STOP LYING TO ME! You moved the date three times, and now are claiming that we’re connected – and you’re billing us already despite the fact that we haven’t reached the date listed on your fucking website. Start paying your actual workers to, you know, do what we’re paying you to do, and stop paying James Earl fucking Jones to spout shit on TV and messages in a really deep voice!
When I go to the “What’s Next” page and put in my phone number, it always says “This number is not in our records” first. Then it actually tells me.
This is the installation kit I was supposed to get:
DSL modem (including phone cord, USB cable, Ethernet cable, and plug)
Installation CD
Five DSL filters
A two-for-one adapter
This is what I actually got:
DSL modem (including phone cord, USB cable, Ethernet cable, and plug)
Installation CD
That’s it. Luckily, I already had a two-for-one adapter, but I had to go to Radio Shack to get a DSL filter.
I have the bloody thing all set up, but I need their permission to use it, which I’m not going to get until this CD works properly.
Picture this: two college students, out in the sticks, stuck with 26.4 dialup (yes, that’s what we were getting) for four years. Then, like magic, we suddenly had DSL in our neighborhood! Yay for technology! It works great, it works fabulous, no problems. For a year. Yes, at the end of this period – a few weeks ago – suddenly all was lost. Our contract had gone out, you see. Hours spent on the phone with Verizon yielding no answers, only that it was gone as quickly as it had appeared and that there was no telling when it would be back. After some cajoling, my husband figured out that they had sold our port. They advised us to get dialup. Fuckers.
My guess as to why: There has been a lot of development between here and town for the past year, and they’ll make more money off the freshly-minted suburbanites than us rubes out here in the sticks. What do them rednecks need with the intar-web?
Uh, Lexis-Nexis and EbscoHost, bitches.
We ended up getting wireless broadband from a local provider. It’s nearly as quick, slightly less reliable, but costs half as much and the guy actually needs our money. We’re getting Vonage and telling Verizon to fuck themselves with a rusty flagpole.
I have no quibble whatsoever with Cox High Speed. I called them to come hook it up, and they said they’d be here between 3:00 and 5:00 on Friday. They were here between 3:00 and 5:00 on Friday. Hooked up the connection, gave me the modem with cable and driver software, asked if I wanted it installed. I said no thanks, hooked everything up, and it’s worked beautifully since. The only outages I’ve had have been monthly one-hour scheduled maintenance downtimes. Other than that, I pay my bill, they give me connectivity.
Other than this one pitting, my Comcast service was spectacular up in Baltimore. Fast and reliable.
Now that I’ve moved to a different part of the state, the service gets interrupted nightly. I had no less than 15 calls lodged to tech support in the first two months of living here.
I called Verizon to get DSL service instead, and they told me someone would call me back with a set-up date. No one ever did. I guess they didn’t want my money that badly.
So now I know it’s not just because we have a third world variety of Verizon here in the Dominican Republic that I’ve been getting fucked around by them big time over the last month. Small comfort really.
We moved house. We alerted them well in advance so they could make the necessary transfers of phone and DSL to coincide with the move, but we were still left without internet access for about two weeks. When it finally was installed it only lasted two days. I reported it, and they started working on the line, cut my phone off, and went home for the weekend. Fantastic, isn’t it? Then you have their help desk which can take hours to get through to, and 50% of the time the calls cut out once you start speaking to an operator. This was particularly gratifying when I was having to use a cellphone to call them, seeing as they had cut off my phone as well as my internet access.
It got to the point where I wanted to suggest they insert their phone, modem, or any other state-of-the-fucking-art telecommunications equipment they might have handy, up the orifice of their choice.
Their oh-so-glossy marketing and advertising screams ‘we’re such a 21st century, first world company and you peasants are lucky to have us here’, but the service is scarcely in the stone age.
The prices are most definitely first world and 21st century, though. Insult to injury - the bill arrived at the height of the crisis, and I couldn’t even go out and pay the bloody thing because I was stuck at home waiting for the technician who never materialised.
I call and ask for a refund in such situations. I’ve never been declined. Despite my extensive beefs with Qwest, even they refunded me for the weeks where our phone/DSL didn’t work (even though it was because, as we later discovered, that our neighbor kept cutting our phone line over and over).
I’ve never had a problem with my cable internet that I’ve had for over three years now.
But that year when I had DSL through Qwest? Constant painful nightmare. I think it’s more to do with shoddy phone companies than shoddy broadband companies.
:eek: Why on earth would they cut your phone lines?! Were they doing it accidentally or on purpose? I second the idea of asking for a refund on the time they are billing you for while your service is in need of repair.
My experience with Verizon DSl is exactly the opposite of yours. I got it a little over a year ago. They actually had it running a day ahead of schedule. It’s been fast and flawless.
Well, apparently Qwest had temporary lines lying across their backyard because the wiring in the house was old and faulty. They came and cut the lines on the ground in their yard before they could be buried. The tech came out, fixed the line, but didn’t report that they had been cut, so they did it again. Lather, rinse, repeat, until a different tech finally reported that the lines were intentionally cut and not damaged, the police were informed, and my neighbors were charged for the repairs. Maybe that’s why Qwest was willing to refund me for no service; they probably just charged it to that crazy guy.
We had never spoken to him before or since; I really don’t know what his problem was.
We tried to get Verizon DSL some years ago when there was no broadband available in our area, and after two months of telephone calls, tech visits, lies, lies, and damn lies, we finally learned that although technically DSL was being offered in our area, the equipment at the phone switching center was old and not actually capable of supporting it. Way to go, assholes.
That being said, we then had Cox broadband for several years in New Orleans, and except for some business hogging the entire bandwidth every night at 11 pm for five minutes like clockwork, causing me to lose all connectivity, we didn’t have any problems. (With the broadband; the TV service was a different story.)
We now have Comcast broadband, in Anne Arundel County, and are actually really pleased with it. We’ve had exactly one outage in four months, and that was for only a few minutes. We shall see, however; good service is always subject to change.
Having been on the other end of DSL, I have to say that the service is problematic. It’s much too vulnerable. The primary upside of DSL is that it’s cheap to use for the provider, but it is very unstable and very vulnerable. That’s just a function of the kinds of systems built in.
I had issues with earthlink for years so I finally switched to SBC. After a somewhat problematic instillation, it’s been running fine ever since.
Just one thing. Not a big deal, but there software won’t work with Outlook. Eh? Sure, I used Outlook Express just fine until it crashed, but regular old Outlook won’t work with their system. How fucked up is that?
I think it’s because broadband ISPs are cable companies and phone companies, which traditionally have shitty service because of their monopoly roots. Who needs good service when there’s no competition?
Ironic that the two ex-monopolies are now competing against each other for broadband customers.
That said, I’ve had pretty decent service with my cable modem the last couple years. It was bad at first, but I’m mostly satisfied lately. A combination of more experience with the IP network and the existence of competition makes them more effective now, I think.
There are five choices for rating service: poor, not so good, satisfactory, very good and outstanding. Any response that is satisfactory or below is considered a failure. Got that? “Satisfactory” is considered a failure!
2005 YTD service levels are at 73.6%, up 3.2% from this time last year. That means 73.6% of respondents said very good or outstanding. The majority of the balance probably answered satisfactory, but even assuming the most favorable numbers - if ¼% answered poor or not so good, that’s still over 11,000 less than satisfied customers (based on est. 4.5 million broadband connections to date). I wonder how low that number has to go before our service isn’t called “shitty” any more.
I second the idea of asking for a refund on the time they are billing you for while your service is in need of repair.