The recent silence from me was neither because I had nothing to say that I thought merited posting nor that I was running scared from commenters - reasons that have previously muffled my singular and oh-so-marvelous voice (ha ha ha). It was "technical difficulties" with my DSL. The issues started Wednesday evening. I called Verizon's supposedly 24/7 technical hotline and spent nearly three hours on the phone, 45 minutes just getting to a live human being and the rest of the time - unsuccessfully - just talking. The tech people a zillion miles away over oceans and seas, and very hard to hear clearly. Plus they seem programmed to say platitudes in response to almost everything (e.g., "that must be very frustating for you" and "I will definitely help you with that" etc.). The talking was time-delayed a bit and the sound quality was dreadful which doesn't give you much confidence since Verizon was first and foremost a PHONE company. I mean, inter-country phone quality was awful when I was in college but that was in the Dark Ages; I would have assumed the cables and/or copper or whatever it is now are far better materials.
I realized at some point that I had unconnected a phone while rearranging furniture on Wednesday, a phone I no longer use, so I thought maybe unplugging the phone had signalled to the modem that something had changed, so I replugged the phone. The modem still wasn't working on Thursday night when I got home, however, so I called the supposedly direct number that one of the tech people had given me. What a surprise (not) to find that it wasn't a direct line at all but just another entré to regular lines with lots and lots of prompts to choose one's way through. As a result, I got to spend another 2-3 hours with all the techies saying they'd tested the connections and everything tested fine so, oh my, it is very hard to know what's wrong and my goodness how frustrating it must be for me. No one could figure out what was wrong except one person I caught who said she'd been out the previous times I called but she could see that the phone line was unresponsive. Eventually the phone got fixed, on Friday, and they told me the DSL line tested fine. However, when I got home Friday night around midnight, the phone was indeed fine but the DSL was still blinking (a/k/a no signal). Saturday morning I called again and spent 4 more hours at it. With no success. (I definitely need to learn to quit sooner.)
So here's the thing. I completely understand that things break and that maybe whatever happened to the phone caused a problem in the modem or even the router. Or maybe vice versa. But it should never have taken four hours for people who know these things to figure out that the first issue was the phone line. Furthermore, a customer should not have to repeat anything dozens of times and STILL be ignored. I wish I was exaggerating about that, but I'm not.
They said they have to come to the house to diagnose and fix the problem, but can't come on Saturdays. Well, that's what they said until I said for something around the two hundredth time (NOT an exaggeration) that I could not be home during the week. Could. Not. Be. Home. During. The. Week. Because it would require taking an entire day off because they won't provide a two-hour window. After all that, I said I guessed the only answer was that I would stop Verizon service and write the PSC about the whole experience just trying to get a DSL up and running. At that point, somehow, magically, the guy said "let me check something" and it seems they CAN send someone on Saturday. Next week.
However, it was THE most unpleasant seven or eight hours. I am not kidding that I said "I can't be home on a weekday but only on weekends" and the man answered with "Well, we will send someone Tuesday, all right?" And that exchange happened dozens of times and even after I was referred to a supervisor and then to
his supervisor. No wonder we make jokes about how they are
trained to ignore what a person says. They are, in the end, simply beyond infuriating and frustrating and rude. On a scale I have never previously encountered.
I had work I had to do on Saturday evening so the solution I came up with was to try one thing first (buying a (returnable) modem and seeing if it worked because it was the modem that was faulty). Apparently that was not the answer. (I am pretty convinced by now that it's the signal being sent incorrectly but I may never know.) The second thing I did was pick up a NetZero HiSpeed internet connection disc. It isn't particularly high speed, not when you're accustomed to DSL, but it *IS* an internet connection so I was able to do my work. I am grateful.
I've talked to several people about all this and they ALL told me about their or their friends' similar Verizon horror stories, two of which were identical about being on hold forEVER and utterly unable to hear or understand the tech people and having to wait a week to get it fixed. They have ALL switched to cable or Optimum. So if my sample is representative of anything, Verizon had better be worried. I mean, no one had no problems. That's quite startling. Even with a small sample of about a dozen people, 100% is amazing. Do the words AIG and Lehman resonate with their priorities? Don't they realize what we all now know, that huge no longer means invulnerable?
Labels: commerce, modern times, web tools
