Thursday, February 18, 2010

A failure of customer service - Verizon

It is rare that I am deeply negative. Verizon has changed that for me. I have been trying since February 3rd to actually have my internet work. It still doesn't. I have spoken to people in Indonesia, India, California, and locations unknown. The latest, for the last three years, I have had a "slow connection" only now, I have found that at the crossbox I am apparently the only DSL customer and they simply can't deliver internet to me. FiOS is apparently available, but not for me. They have offered no helpful solutions. Why is this such a problem? Are they really as incompetent as I now believe. Are all cable and phone companies just raping us? When do we as consumers of a product become enraged by their gross failure of customer service? When do we band together to demand change?

If politics is any indication, we should simply throw them all out! If that is the case, when we are as dependent as we are on technology, how can we force telecommunications to meet the needs of its customers rather than its shareholders? Ideas - anyone?

1 comment:

Alan said...

I don't know what your exact distance is from MPower Communication's Central Office switch is since that is proprietary informations that all the LEC's have stopped publishing including Verizon but based on the fact that your CO is SLBHCAXF, Google Maps approximates your distance to the CO as 18,480 feet. DSL's maximum distance is 18,000 feet.

The Ma Bells will not tell you your CO distance unless you ask and even then, they won't recommend that you drop their service because DSL service doesn't work 'fast' at that distance. This is exactly why Google's proposal was so alluring to over 1,100 communities that applied. One community even renamed itself the city of Google for a month hoping to catch Google's attention for this product:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/cities-rush-to-woo-google-broadband-before-friday-deadline/

Unfortunately, Google's application period is over so you can't submit Seal Beach if it hasn't already done so. Sorry to hear that you can't get FiOS. Have you checked cable carriers like RoadRunner and Cox? Otherwise, your alternative may be to try Sprint's Overdrive product or satellite if you can't even get that.