Nature Blog Network

Friday, December 14, 2007

Raise Your Pereopod if You Hate Verizon and Forced Internet Providers

So I'm still out of internet service at home (where I do my blogging). I was told by the Verizon employee that helped me when I transferred service to my new address we would have internet access Dec. 12. Well that glorious day came and lo and behold... no internet service. I called that night only to be told by the nice, friendly automatic woman's voice (after a shouting a series of yes and no's, account numbers, etc.) that she couldn't help me and I need to call back within normal business hours.

So I called the next day and was utterly dumbfounded. Apparently, my account was suspended without my knowledge and the Verizon employee(s) couldn't tell me why. So after being transfered between 6 people (from the US to India at least twice...), hung up on once and shuttled between tech support and sales multiple times I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to start a new account. Fine.

So I got shuttled to a new person who quoted me the lowest price of $21.99. My old service was $14.99! In order to get that rate I had to order service online. OK, but I don't have internet service... His advice was to go to a buddy's. Fortunately for me I still do occasionally go into work and can obviously access the internet there or at the cafes where I sometimes operate out of (or the bar like I am right now). Unfortunately for my wife, who has been without internet and email access for 2 weeks now, she stays at and operates from home.

So I ordered service today and assuming it went through like the website said, I should be back in business by Dec. 21st. But, their customer service was horrendous and their answer to difficult questions is to shuttle you to India (whose answer is to shuttle you somewhere else too) or hang up on you. I wasn't being rude, but my tone was probably annoyed after about the 3rd person. And to top it off, I can't get the $14.99 rate for DSL without a 2 year committment. Since I know that I will not be here for 2 years and they made no mention of the fees for early termination, I didn't want to take my chances so I went with the 1 year contract at $17.99, still cheaper than ordering over the phone for whatever strange reason.

But don't despair, I'll be back better than ever. My end of the year stress is (mostly) over so I have a bit more time to write. Of course this misadventure has caused me to botch up hosting the Boneyard last week. I sincerely apologize to those who submitted and were expecting the Boneyard to be posted. Brian at Laelaps will be hosting the next edition and I'll make it up when I get fully restored.

6 comments:

  1. How strange... I had a similar problem with Verizon when they suspended my phone account for 6 months instead of 2 months. Their customer service is terrible.

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  2. I'm always amused when I get I transfered to India and speak with "Billy" or "Charles".

    I feel your pain: I once tried activating a bank card with "Billy" (after being transfered at least 4 times) who told me that in order to activate it I had to confirm it was my account by providing for him the latest transactions on the account. It was a brand new account, hence why I was trying to activate the card, so there were no transactions. "Billy" was sorry, but he was unable to help me and hung up.

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  3. This is what really bugs me about how phone/cable companies are granted local monopolies. They can talk about their commitments to customer service all they want, but when they are pressed they really don't have the means nor the need to provide it.

    Here, I thought you were busy tramping about the woods with your kin that you didn't have time for this site.

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  4. That's bad service, simple and straight and I'd move an internet company for that suspending of accounts BS, and for all that trouble.

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  5. Glad to see you're still alive and kickin in your new wooded retreat. I'm surprised that they have DSL going out to there! Last time I moved I complained about their service and they gave me free dial-up till the DSL was hooked up.

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  6. Thanks all for the sympathies. Of course when I signed up online they didn't tell me when I would get service,m just that it is sometime by Dec. 21...

    The only options are dial-up (not an option for a blogger or my wife who is a photographer and works from home), cable modem and DSL. the cable modem is $35/mo. whereas I can get similar speed with DSL for around $18/mo. As poor as we are we'll go with the cheap version thank you very much. Its actually quite unbelievable that this stuff costs so much still. I know its come down, i remember payin $45/mo. for cable or dsl. But they keep absorbing all the small competition.

    For cable service, we only have comcast (a few years ago it was adelphia...) and they weren't even listed inn the local yellow pages. We hd to track them down online, although we did find the number to their office in the white pages. Linda tried ordering basic service. You know, the 15 channel, $15/mo. deal. It took her 5-10 min. to convince the sales rep that we did not want any packages, no internet and no extended cable, etc. etc. And after all of that they decided that they wanted to see our lease to make sure we were not the previous tenant (who had his cable shut off by the company). So if we want just basic crap local channels we must go to their office on the other side of town, present our lease and then go through the whole shebang again.

    I don't even want TV really and she only wants it to decompress and veg out in front of after a tough day of dealing with the kids. All we really care about is the internet of course. So, we'll see if we really want cheapo worthless cable TV after we get our internet back.

    Another long rant lol

    Not mention our landlord NOT paying the previous water bill for $52 and their threatening to shut off our wate on wed. if not paid. I'll have to try and sort that one out today on top of revisions and further analyses from 2 papers. blah

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