Verizon: A Study in the Art of Sucking

The saga ain't over quite yet.

• Phone lines being transferred to the new office tomorrow. Originally scheduled between 8:30-12:00. As of today, it's an "all-day job" between 8:00-5:00.
• Originally I was going to have any inbound calls to our office line forwarded to my cell phone. The customer service representative I spoke with assured me that this forwarding service would cover any down time during the line switching process. As of today I discovered that this forwarding "doesn't always work." How quaint! This forced us to send an apologetic warning in advance to our clients and a few partners and vendors, making what ideally should be a smooth process bumpy and uncomfortable, like that one shave where you realize you really need to buy a new set of Mach 3 razors for an exorbitant sum.
  
• Verizon shut off our DSL prematurely on 12/20. Despite all their claims of escalation, expediting, et cetera, their last communiqué said that they would be able to get our DSL back up this Friday. January 4th. More than two weeks after they shut it off! Simply incredible, made all the more so by the fact that we are moving into our new office this Saturday. Useless. But, the kicker:
• I received an email this afternoon from Verizon saying that they would be able to install DSL at our old office this Monday, 01/07. Something tells me we will be canceling that work order.

On a related note, I am not looking forward to finishing packing and the whole moving/unpacking process on Saturday morning. Ugh. But I am looking forward to:

• A beautiful, new, completely refurbished office.
• My own office complete with circa 1980 glass "ice" blocks,
  aka "the Igloo."
  
• Lunch in the North End.
  
• An around-the-corner commute. Literally.
• "Meetings" at Billy Tse's.
  

Now if I only liked my job and made money doing it...

Verizon Sucks II: The Internets in Jeopardy

Verizon's assault on webernetting continues with renewed intensity. After having spoken with no fewer than five representatives, including at least one manager, receiving responses varying from "It looks like it might be ready now" to "All I see here is that you are scheduled for service on January 4th," getting a different department each time I called and then getting rerouted to a "different" number (always the same as the one I just called), and repeating our business phone number and address many, many times, we washed our hands of the whole thing. We are moving on the 5th; getting DSL back up on the 4th would be the height of lunacy.

This is without a doubt the worst customer service I have experienced either personally or in business. Failure to follow up when they said they would, lack of response, different answers, false updates, and a complete lack of attempting to fix the problem that they caused, which will eventually have resulted in about two weeks of disruption and/or decreased productivity. If you are a business owner, seriously consider vendors aside from Verizon. As a Verizon customer myself (family phone plan) I have to say that I've found their cell service great, although I haven't had to deal with their customer service until now. This nightmare will seriously affect my decisions moving forward.

Of course the upshot of all of this is that I get to work from home today in my boxers. (Not literally; in the metaphorical sense of the phrase. I am currently wearing jeans.)

Verizon Sucks

My company is moving offices in early January. Not a major move - in fact the new office is literally in my block, right around the corner from my apartment. I didn't think my commute could get any shorter but there you have it.

I was on the phone with Verizon today to transfer our phone lines over to the new spot and to schedule a stop of our DSL service for January 5th. The woman on the phone said everything was all set. I hung up and a few minutes later noticed our internet wasn't working. After resetting the modem and router a few times I called Verizon back to discover that the woman I had spoken to was "enter-happy today" and shut off our service immediately. Now, one would think that this wasn't a big deal, right? Just restart the service? No. First she had to check to see if she could cancel the cancellation. That was impossible, so she had to submit a new work order to see if she could get a new DSL line in on one of our other lines (the old one still had a pending cancellation on it so she couldn't put it back on there, even though it had already been canceled). Of course, she said she would try to expedite this, but she couldn't give me any guarantee, and it might take up to five business days. Are you kidding me? How can it possibly take so long to turn it back on if some rube in customer service can flick off our internets two weeks ahead of time by pressing a key? Just incomprehensible. At least half a day of productivity shot and nothing but BS from the vendor. This is customer service at its worst, folks.

Needless to say we will be getting another vendor for phone and internet service for the new office.