Why Verizon Deserves to Die a Slow, Painful Death
For those of you who heard shouting coming from our office the last three days, we apologize, but if you’ve ever dealt with Verizon, we probably need say no more. Even the best of them will be reduced to a screaming idiot after spending three days trying to get through to Verizon representatives. And after three days of soul searching, we still cannot fathom why a business line ordered with voicemail came without voicemail and why it took the phone company 72 hours, 82 representatives, and three escalations to correct their mistake.
Fool Me Twice
When we opened Paragraph, we made two mistakes. The lesser mistake was to have a set of light switches installed behind the spiral staircase, virtually undetectable and difficult to reach without hitting your head on a stair. The greater, and dare we say greatest mistake, was to have our DSL provided by Verizon.
What we learned with DSL is that Verizon is very friendly when you are buying something. Before the product is installed, you might be lulled into thinking you’re making a sound choice from how knowledgeable and friendly the customer service representatives seem. Once the DSL's installed and it breaks (and the DSL will break), good luck in finding a single representative who can explain either the problem, the resolution or give you their last name. Accountability? None. Product knowledge? Grade F. Customer service? Non-existent. Hold time? Pack a lunch.
After our DSL went down, we spent a week on the phone with Verizon trying to get it back up. At one point, we were told by a representative in Dallas a manhole that blew on 42nd Street was the reason our DSL line, two days prior to the manhole explosion and 28 blocks away from it, had gown down. We vowed then and there to get rid of Verizon as fast as possible and never make a deal with the devil again.
Fast forward to 2007. We’ve lived peacefully without Verizon for over a year. A small company called Bway.net provides our DSL line and we use voice over IP (VoIP) for phone and fax service, provided by Vonage. We’ve never had an outage, however, we’ve also never been thrilled with the quality of the phone line. It cuts in and out and we have to ask callers to repeat themselves, or we just give up and use our cell phones. This is because our DSL line serves both our phones and thirty+ people surfing the Internet.
One solution would be to get a second DSL line dedicated to our phone and fax, which is both expensive and overkill. The other solution would be to have a real phone line installed, which would require us to get back in bed with Verizon, and we avoided this like the plague. Until last month.
The Plague
Very simple. One business phone line with voicemail, one business fax line and zero features, zero calling plans. No local; no regional; no local, regional deluxe; no local, regional, long distance super deluxe or the forty other plans offered to us. We’ll just pay the six or seven cents per minute, thank you, and the other taxes and surcharges Verizon pads into their bills.
On Monday, six weeks after placing the order, the installers arrive. They’re early, friendly and finish the job in under an hour—even though the job order they had with them did not include the installation of a jack we distinctly remember ordering. We plug in the phone and fax at five, as instructed, and get a dial tone, and it’s the right number! We’re elated. We’re ready to dance in the street. Now, how do we get the voicemail programmed so we can go home and sleep soundly?
Does This Answer Your Question?
Since we’ve received no instructions or welcome kit in the mail, we search the Verizon site for the voicemail access phone number. In about a half hour, we find the page titled: Voicemail Access Phone Number Search, except the only thing on the page is the title, a few inches of blank space where presumably the search box should be and, "Did this answer your question?" with a YES or NO selection
We make our first phone call to Verizon on Monday at 6:00p.
We get through to an operator on Monday at 6:30p.
The operator informs us that she is in California, everyone in New York has gone home and she has no way of giving us the access number for voicemail or helping us further. Because she’s in California. And this should make perfect sense to us.
The familiar Verizon frustration rises. We call it a day and accept that we will not have voicemail for one evening. Nothing to get upset about.
Small Success
On Tuesday morning at 10a we get a New York operator who informs us that voicemail was not included in the original order. Funny. She offers to put the order in and says it will take at least 24 hours. Unacceptable. We push further, stay on the phone for an entire hour and voicemail gets turned on, lickety split. She gives us the access number and we’re on our way. Small successes.
We get our voicemail programmed—"Hello, you’ve reached Paragraph" etc.—and everything seems dandy until we test it. When you call Paragraph, it rings six times and then you get the three tone error (boop BOOP booOOP) followed by, "Please dial a 1 and the number of the person you are trying to reach." If we are on the phone, this happens after one or two rings. At the moment the caller should be automatically forwarded to our voicemail, they instead receive this error message.
Frustration meter: steady and rising.
The Horror
At Noon on Tuesday, we begin making steady phone calls to report the problem and ask when it will be fixed. It seems to be something minor. If voicemail can get turned on quickly, we’re hopeful they can square away the call forwarding and then we’ll never have to talk to a Verizon representative for the rest of our lives.
The first representative tells us that the order was put in incorrectly as a dial-9 phone line. We do not dial-9 before making calls. She promises a correction.
The next representative tells us that it’s a programming error and that it will be corrected shortly.
The next four representatives give us similar but disparate answers, promising a fix by the end of the day. Right before five, it’s still not working.
We remember our lesson from the Verizon DSL battle of 2006—escalate! escalate! escalate!—and request a supervisor. The customer service respresentative says there are no available supervisors and she also cannot provide even the first name of any supervisor working that day. She will also not reveal her last name because it is against their policy. We press further and get the first name of a supervisor and a promise of a call back as soon as possible. We never receive a call from that supervisor.
Frustration meter: off the charts.
Getting Somewhere?
We call again from home at 6:30p, because what the hay, maybe we’ll get a representative who will actually look at the order and problem and shed some light on how to fix this rather than passing the buck or saying to wait another twelve hours for nothing to happen. This representative sees the problem right away. Voicemail was ordered without call forwarding, and without call forwarding, the voicemail will never, and would never, have worked. She notates it on the account and says we should call first thing in the morning to have the work done.
We feel like we’re getting somewhere.
Bob Tag, Our Hero
We call first thing Wednesday morning and after talking to four or five more clueless representatives and escalating, we get a supervisor named Bob Tag around 11:30a. Bob not only freely offers his first and last name, but he is friendly, attentive, promises to call back in five minutes, and calls back in five minutes.
Bob Tag makes several phone calls to technicians, programmers, the business office, the order center and quality assurance and he calls us promptly with updates. Except once Bob Tag passes it off to a technician and QA person, he must have become too confident that the work would get done. The work did not get done.
At one o’clock, we get a call from a technician who asks if we’re having a dial-9 problem, because that is what the ticket says. When have him call the line himself to experience the problem—the only way it seems to make sense— he says, "Oh, that’s the voicemail department. I can’t fix that."
We get a call from a QA person (at least Bob Tag got people calling us!) and we explained how incompetent Verizon seems. "I wouldn’t call it incompetence," the representative explains. "It’s just that there are a lot of departments and they can’t easily talk to one another." That, and they all pass the buck back and forth.
The Final Push
At three o’clock, we make a last ditch effort to get the problem fixed. We’ve only got two hours before everyone goes home and then we have to wait another night and experience the dawn of a new day of frustration.
We get someone in the Orders Department who is very patient with our rants which have grown loud, frustrated and hopeless.
"Why is it so difficult to have voicemail turned on and get it working," we ask. "Why have we been on the phone for three days and why do we get a different story from every person we talk to?"
He assures us it's a programming issue, and informs us that the programming department was down the day before and that now they’ve got a backlog. "Why are you the first person to tell us this, and why should we believe you?" we ask.
"If I can get through to the programming department," he vows, "the problem will be fixed right away." We wonder at a company that makes it impossible for one department to contact another department. We accept our fate, hang up and think about ways to make do without voicemail. At least we’ve got a clear phone line!
A three thirty we get a phone call to let us know it’s fixed. We test it, because we can’t really believe: A) they’ve fixed it and B) they’ve called to let us know it’s fixed. But it IS fixed. We've got to think it has something to do with Bob Tag and that guy in the Orders Department, the only two Verizon employees worth their weight in salt. And now, truly, we will never have to deal with a Verizon customer service representative ever again, as long as we both shall live.
Posted at 1:49 PM | Comments (6)
Posted by Paul
Mar 17, 2007
Mar 17, 2007
I'm having the same problem with DSL I ordered one month ago. I wish Bob Tag had a phone number I could call because the dozen people I've talked to so far don't know anything.
Posted by Ian T
Mar 18, 2007
You can buy a fairly inexpensive piece of network equipment that would make sure your VOIP device had enough of the bandwidth at all times. I'm talking less than 100 bucks. E-Mail me if you want more information.
Posted by youssef mzimaz
Mar 18, 2007
Verizon is #$@#@$ big nasty company.
they charge me 625 dollars in 3 months.
I moved AND THEY STILL CHARGING ME FOR THE OLD PHONE AND THEY SAID THE CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT.
THEY ARE VERY NASTY
Posted by Jim
Mar 19, 2007
I don't think Verizon is systemically able to handle it's business. Here's our story. In January we called to say that we are remodeling our home and want to bury the utilities. Whomever we spoke with said that a representative would have to look at the job and someone would have to be home. Took a day off work. Verizon representative looked at job, saw trench and said he would take care of it. Two weeks later called back and asked what happened to our order no one knew about it. Sent out two workers who put empty tube in trench. They left. Nothing more happened. Called back to find out what's next and they sent out third crew who didn't put anything in the empty tube in the trenc but put in a box on the side of the house and then said that we needed to upgrade to fiber optics and they couldn't do any more. Also told them that there were a total of three lines and three numbers going into the house -they only had a record of one line so they couldn't do anything about the other two lines. We called Verizon again and was told we didn't qualify for fiber optic lines. Didn't really understand that so we called back the next day and were told that we had to have a new connector box to convert our regular phone system to fiber optio. That box had already been installed by the last crew. My contractors had left the jumble of wires circling the house alone so we would still have service. It reached that point after two months of phone calls and visits by at least six Verizon representatives that our new phone servicle line was a spliced cable from the telephone pole to the house and certainly not in the trench. The last day with Verizon we were on the phone for three hours and talked with at least six customer service reps. Finally asked for a supervisor and was told that somebody would call us back in 24 hours. That was two weeks ago. I had to switch to Comcast who had responded immediately to our request to bury their cable. Had one tech out who quietly restrung the wires in the house - so it was a very simple matter to switch our phone service to Comcast. I lost a dedicated fax line in the process and would never of changed if Verizon had just responded. It was very frustating. I filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania PUC and have been assigned an investigator but who knows what that will do. I just got a "welcome" to Verizon Long Distance letter today two weeks after cancelling the service.
Posted by gloria stuart
Mar 20, 2007
The part I liked the best was "there are a lot of departments and we can't easily talk to one another" - Can't easily 'talk to one another'?? They're a phone company for crying out loud! That's rich.
Posted by tL
Mar 21, 2007
I share your pain.
Got a blog dedicated to my adventure with DSL installation in the office.
Check it out. Let's share our misery.
Think Bell will hire Bob Tag?
www.the-bell-ultra-experience.blogspot.com