Verizon FiOS Woes
Like a Firefox user is stuck with the browser, I'm trapped with FiOS. Sure, people can say I can use another browser and Internet service provider (ISP), but that shows me how stupid they are. The key for me is making my life easier, not harder.
Let's use browsers as an example. I love Opera and do use it occasionally. However, I never use the widgets and using Javascript to add functionality seems like a hassle. I'm interested in Google's Chrome browser after reading about the pwn2own results, but there isn't a Mac version, and I don't want to run a virtual app for 1 program. Firefox, compared to the others, has made my life easier with the numerous extensions that are easy to install. However, Firefox is clunky and gets slower with every extension installed, and I'm not feeling as secure after pwn2own. Firefox's themes are a nice touch to change the outdated look of it, but the themes can create graphical glitches like button bars expanding when a mouse cursor hovers over a button, or a button that looked fine with the default theme might look way different with another theme - I've had drop-down menus added to buttons and some buttons either became larger or the button pic shifted off center.
Simply put, FiOS is like going from dial-up to cable. Plus, I need that bandwidth for business reasons. Like Firefox, it's the only game in town that gives me what I need. The only way I will switch is when something new and better comes along. So I will vent my frustrations with them right here.
Speaking of frustrations ... I am in the process of switching from shared hosting with Lunarpages to dedicated hosting with Media Temple. During the process of entering my guinea pig domains that were the first to be used with the new service, my Internet dropped. At first I thought it was OpenDNS. Long story short, OpenDNS' welcome page indicated I was using OpenDNS. However, my first domain wasn't resolving, and OpenDNS' cache check showed my DNS info had propagated. Even though my Airport Extreme had the correct OpenDNS IPs for DNS, I had to locally enter them in my iMac's ethernet settings to work. Thinking back, I should've flushed my DNS. Anyway, at that point I assumed OpenDNS was having issues.
After clearing the OpenDNS IPs and using the defaults, I started getting Verizon's no access pages, which gave me an option to login and see if my account was active. Lo and behold, after logging in it said my account was in fact active and displayed a notice to call support if I was still having connection issues.
Let me back up a little further because there are a couple pertinent facts that need to be known: 1. I had some connection issues a few months ago. When you call Verizon you are prompted to enter the phone number that is associated with the account, which I found out that I hadn't updated. So at that time I was told that I needed a new router, which I received over a week later, and I asked the support person if he could update my phone information.
2. Last October we set up an appointment to have FiOS TV installed on October 18th. Like cable companies, our window was from 8am to 5pm. However, our tech never showed up. After having our time wasted we decided we weren't interested anymore. To add fuel to the fire, a tech called on November 18th to let us know he was at the house to install our service. So, again, we expressed we weren't interested because no one showed up on the date we set in October.
Getting back to yesterday, when I initially called Verizon I entered my current home phone number, but the automated attendant said there wasn't any information associated with that number, so I used the old 703 Vonage number we had, and that worked. After 5-10 minutes of redundant minutia I finally reached the FiOS Internet section which disconnected me before I could speak with anyone.
After going through that again, I was finally speaking with a person who eventually put me on hold. I should've realized what was to come because I was bumped back into the main phone system menu after waiting for 5 minutes. From there it became a circle jerk that lasted from 8/8:30 am to when I finally passed the cell phone to Kate around 2:30pm due to frustration.
This is what the problem was: someone else's outstanding debt ($600+) was linked to me in Verizon's computer system.
Because of that, they suspended my FiOS Internet service. I discovered this after speaking with person number 3 out of the 14 I would eventually have to deal with. The most common reason I was being passed off to another group was because no one was able to access my account because another group locked it. Thus started the circle: tech support to billing to finance and back to tech support, which started the circle again. Somewhere in there I had to deal with a FiOS phone and Internet group (which was surprising to me because I assumed FiOS would only have 1 dedicated group, with Internet, TV, and phone being meted out from there), phone line quality at Verizon, a lost cell signal, and rude people who said I agreed to the service or couldn't wait a few minutes so I could find my account information because they weren't seeing anything under my old 703 number.
I'm not going to speak about Kate's experience except that she endured what I did up to 6:45pm. I also have a client who went through a similar ordeal, but her's was with Verizon's phone service. Thus concluded our anniversary vacation.
Like a Firefox user is stuck with the browser, I'm trapped with FiOS. Sure, people can say I can use another browser and Internet service provider (ISP), but that shows me how stupid they are. The key for me is making my life easier, not harder.
Let's use browsers as an example. I love Opera and do use it occasionally. However, I never use the widgets and using Javascript to add functionality seems like a hassle. I'm interested in Google's Chrome browser after reading about the pwn2own results, but there isn't a Mac version, and I don't want to run a virtual app for 1 program. Firefox, compared to the others, has made my life easier with the numerous extensions that are easy to install. However, Firefox is clunky and gets slower with every extension installed, and I'm not feeling as secure after pwn2own. Firefox's themes are a nice touch to change the outdated look of it, but the themes can create graphical glitches like button bars expanding when a mouse cursor hovers over a button, or a button that looked fine with the default theme might look way different with another theme - I've had drop-down menus added to buttons and some buttons either became larger or the button pic shifted off center.
Simply put, FiOS is like going from dial-up to cable. Plus, I need that bandwidth for business reasons. Like Firefox, it's the only game in town that gives me what I need. The only way I will switch is when something new and better comes along. So I will vent my frustrations with them right here.
Speaking of frustrations ... I am in the process of switching from shared hosting with Lunarpages to dedicated hosting with Media Temple. During the process of entering my guinea pig domains that were the first to be used with the new service, my Internet dropped. At first I thought it was OpenDNS. Long story short, OpenDNS' welcome page indicated I was using OpenDNS. However, my first domain wasn't resolving, and OpenDNS' cache check showed my DNS info had propagated. Even though my Airport Extreme had the correct OpenDNS IPs for DNS, I had to locally enter them in my iMac's ethernet settings to work. Thinking back, I should've flushed my DNS. Anyway, at that point I assumed OpenDNS was having issues.
After clearing the OpenDNS IPs and using the defaults, I started getting Verizon's no access pages, which gave me an option to login and see if my account was active. Lo and behold, after logging in it said my account was in fact active and displayed a notice to call support if I was still having connection issues.
Let me back up a little further because there are a couple pertinent facts that need to be known: 1. I had some connection issues a few months ago. When you call Verizon you are prompted to enter the phone number that is associated with the account, which I found out that I hadn't updated. So at that time I was told that I needed a new router, which I received over a week later, and I asked the support person if he could update my phone information.
2. Last October we set up an appointment to have FiOS TV installed on October 18th. Like cable companies, our window was from 8am to 5pm. However, our tech never showed up. After having our time wasted we decided we weren't interested anymore. To add fuel to the fire, a tech called on November 18th to let us know he was at the house to install our service. So, again, we expressed we weren't interested because no one showed up on the date we set in October.
Getting back to yesterday, when I initially called Verizon I entered my current home phone number, but the automated attendant said there wasn't any information associated with that number, so I used the old 703 Vonage number we had, and that worked. After 5-10 minutes of redundant minutia I finally reached the FiOS Internet section which disconnected me before I could speak with anyone.
After going through that again, I was finally speaking with a person who eventually put me on hold. I should've realized what was to come because I was bumped back into the main phone system menu after waiting for 5 minutes. From there it became a circle jerk that lasted from 8/8:30 am to when I finally passed the cell phone to Kate around 2:30pm due to frustration.
This is what the problem was: someone else's outstanding debt ($600+) was linked to me in Verizon's computer system.
Because of that, they suspended my FiOS Internet service. I discovered this after speaking with person number 3 out of the 14 I would eventually have to deal with. The most common reason I was being passed off to another group was because no one was able to access my account because another group locked it. Thus started the circle: tech support to billing to finance and back to tech support, which started the circle again. Somewhere in there I had to deal with a FiOS phone and Internet group (which was surprising to me because I assumed FiOS would only have 1 dedicated group, with Internet, TV, and phone being meted out from there), phone line quality at Verizon, a lost cell signal, and rude people who said I agreed to the service or couldn't wait a few minutes so I could find my account information because they weren't seeing anything under my old 703 number.
I'm not going to speak about Kate's experience except that she endured what I did up to 6:45pm. I also have a client who went through a similar ordeal, but her's was with Verizon's phone service. Thus concluded our anniversary vacation.