One Life.

warning: LONG RANT. 

Wow, where do I even begin.  I guess I’ll start with the initial placement of our new DSL order for the office we just moved into.  This was about 3 weeks ago, when my Dad contacted Verizon and talked to them about our high-speed Internet options at our new location.  They told us that since our location was so far from the central office, it would not be likely that we could get DSL in there. 

 Well, he pushed and pushed, and got them to put through a “dry-loop” install order, which is a line just for DSL (they usually piggy-back it on a voice line),  just to see if they can do the install.  The reason we insisted so hard was because on their website, they have a tool that shows you if high-speed Internet is available at your address, and our location has 17 units, and in like 3 or 4 of them, it showed that it was available, and in the rest it showed that it wasn’t available.  This should’ve warned us about the reliability and accuracy of their service, but we pushed forward. 

We were assigned a Service Activation date of Oct. 4th, well before our Oct. 9th move in date.  We felt safe. 

Oct 5th comes around, and I call to check in on the order.  The friendly robot lady tells me in a really sweet robot voice “Congratulations!  Your Verizon DSL order is complete!”  SWEET!!  However, I had just checked the status website, and it said it wasn’t.  So I say “operator” about two times to the robot and finally get a live person.  This sweet girl named Christine tells me that according to the notes on the ticket, there were “LOAD COILS” on the line, and once those were removed, they can install the DSL.  Date gets pushed back to Oct. 8th.

Oct. 8th comes around, and the date gets changed to Oct. 9.  Move in day.  6pm on the 9th rolls around and still no Internet, and now I’m at this new location, and no phones, because they’re being activated on the 10th. 

So today, I get up early in the morning, a$$ crack of dawn 7:45am, and roll myself out of bed because I knew I had lots of stuff to take care of.  I get to the office, and driving in I call Verizon.  After I make my way thru the nice robot lady congratulating me that I now have high-speed Internet, I get some other rep, and she tells me that there’s these things called “LOAD COILS” on the line, and they need to put someone on it to remove them.  WHAT?!?!  This is the exact same information I got 5 days ago!  So I’m like, “I know, how come this hasn’t been done yet… blah blah” and she just says that no one put the work order through.  But she has now, so it’ll be done.  I start bitchin’ about how it needs to get done TODAY, and she says in a very stern voice “Sir, I can guarantee you that your DSL will not be installed today.”  Don’t you love guarantees??

 I get off the phone with her because I had a 9am call, and I told my dad to follow up with Verizon.  While I’m on my call, I can hear him in the other room SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS to some other Verizon rep, whom according to him was the most incompetent person he’d ever talked to.  I believe him.

His efforts got him to some nice lady, who eventually told him that a supervisor would be calling him at 11am.  11am came and went, and no call from a supervisor.  The thing that was really lame though was that while he was talking with them, they just kept asking him if he’d like to cancel the order.  They completely didn’t care about our business and our problems.

Now, today was also the day that Verizon was supposed to install phone service at the place, with an appointment window between 8am and 12pm.  Well, 12:30pm rolls around, and no tech to do the phone install.  I call and eventually get him paged.  He calls me 30 minutes after that, and eventually shows up around 1:30pm. 

Then I explain to him my whole “LOAD COILS” DSL issue, and he’s like “oh, no problem, I can remove those for you, IF YOU HAVE VERIZON ASSIGN THE WORKORDER TO ME … but that’ll take you a while.”  And he grins as he walks away to go do the phone jacks. 

So I get back on the phone with Verizon DSL Business Support, and get this peach of a girl named “Amy.”  After about 20 minutes, the only words coming out of her mouth were “I cannot contact anyone, all I can do is update your ticket, and when they see it, they’ll assign a technician to it.”  I kept telling her I had a technician on site, and there was nothing she could do to update the work order to assign it to him.  According to her, no other rep could do this either, there was no supervisor that could help me, and no other department other than Sales would be of any help to me.  So she transfers me to Sales, and I hang up.

Then I call the same person that I called earlier to page the technician.  I tell her my sob story, and she’s like “Oh, you need him assigned to do some work?  Sure thing.  There ya go.”  And she just does it.  And now the dude can fix the “LOAD COILS.”

So I go look for him downstairs where I left him, in the electrical room, and he’s not there.  I wait back in the office about 15 mins, and he’s still not there.  Then I go look around the other side of the building, and I see another Verizon truck pull up, this one from Verizon DSL.  This is some other tech that now came to fix my “LOAD COILS.”  Dude goes to work too!

Couple of hours later, I ask the DSL guy how its going.  He’s like “It’s all set, but I doubt you’re going to be able to get much speed since you’re so far.” And I’m like “You fixed the LOAD COILS?” And he’s like “Nah, there were no LOAD COILS.”  WHAAAA?!?!?

So I hook up the DSL Router and blam-o, I got Internet.  And its decently fast.  Not super fast, but exactly what they said it would be.  So now, let me break it down:

• Oct 4 - Service is delayed because of LOAD COILS
• Oct 9 - Service is delayed because of LOAD COILS
• Oct 10, 8:30am - Someone will be assigned, but there’s no way this thing can be done today.
• Oct 10, 4:30pm - DSL gets installed, THERE WERE NO LOAD COILS ON THE LINE!!
• I’ve been a Verizon Business Customer for over 3 years, and this is how they do business with me.

So that concludes my huge rant about Verizon DSL.  I’m really sorry it got so long, but really, this is as short as I could’ve made it and still keep most of the details.  If you’ve been screwed by Verizon before, please comment away.