Verizon Fios, a love.. hate affair
By Adam Kinder on Apr 28, 2008 in
What I love about Fios:
What I don’t love about Fios:
The last week of March, I got a new debit card. I switched over all my auto-pay bills to the new card, except for Verizon. This is how the cycle went for 18 days:
- I can’t switch over the card, because I can’t login to the website.
- I can’t register for the website because I don’t have a Verizon account number.
- I don’t have a Verizon account number because I haven’t received my first bill yet.
- I’m not going to receive a paper bill because I have e-bills, viewable on my Account page on Verizon’s website
- I can’t register for the website because I don’t have a Verizon account number.
- I can’t get patched through to the proper department on their Happy Voice Powered Menu System of Hell(tm) because I don’t have a Verizon account number.
- Once I mash the buttons and get put into the General queue, I have hold times of up to 45 minutes before giving up.
I scanned the internet looking for help, and found an obscure reference to Verizon’s call transfer flag system. Apparently, if you call the Fraud hotline, it directs you almost immediately to a human. Once there, lie and tell them you hit the wrong number, they transfer you, but the fraud bit stays on and you go almost immediately to a human.
Finally, I talked to some woman, and she gave me my Verizon Account number, but said she couldn’t update the credit card because Verizon’s billing system crashed. No, I’m not making this up.
After multiple failed attempts at logging in or registering on the site, a few days later I managed to get ahold of another random lady on the phone, who let me know that the other random lady left off one number in my account number.
This is… day 20 after changing my card over. She is able to change my card, all is good, finally.
April 23rd, the Fios goes out for no reason. My phone system is tied into the net, so there goes my phone as well. And, as luck would have it, I’m suffering from an ulcer. At 5pm on April 24th, I get through to Verizon support ( my account number was coming up invalid again, hooray ), who lets me know that someone forgot to take the auto-disconnect off my account after I updated the card info.
Yeah, honestly.
She pushes the order through, gets me back online after a day of downtime ( and some angry, angry customers ). I figure it’s all good and done.
HA, wrong. Today I get a mail back notice stating to mail back my Verizon router and box, or in 15 days I’ll be charged $99.
I really, really, really hope to god I don’t have to call in about this. And, for the record, my account number still doesn’t work. But, I’m online, so, whoopdefuckindo 
Y’know, those speeds aren’t too bad, but g’lawd I hated Verizon when I used them for DSL.
Now I have Comcast. Whee. Fuckin’ whee. As long as we don’t have metered bandwidth we’ll probably use these shitty services quietly complaining to ourselves and leave it at that.