Archive for the 'Customer Service' Category
Verizon FIOS – Great Internet, Terrible Customer Service
In yet another long list of this company just doesn’t get it, here we have Exhibit A: Verizon FIOS Customer Service.
I am currently a FIOS customer and have been for about a year now. I pay $69.99 a month for 20Mbps/20Mbps here in Reston, VA. It has been a great service. Fast and very reliable. Much better than my previous ISP, Comcast. Not that Comcast was terrible, but FIOS is better.
I was a happy customer until January 1st this year. I got a message from FIOS stating that my rate would go up from $69.99 to $79.99 a month. I was not thrilled about it but I was very happy with my service and to be honest, I have no other choice in ISP if I want a high bandwidth upload speed. Comcast offers 2Mbps here in Reston but only FIOS has 20Mbps.
So I started paying $79.99 a month beginning two months ago.
Today I was talking with a client of mine who said they just upgraded their FIOS and saved a bunch of money (some sort of bundle deal). But the thing that got my attention was when he mentioned he is now on a 25Mbps/25Mbps plan. Huh? Faster than me? Well that deserved some investigation.
So I looked through the Verizon website. What a confusing bunch of crap they have. If you are logged into your verizon account they tell you to click here to see if you can get a faster plan but that dumps you into the public portal as if you were not logged in. From there you can fill in your street address to check availability but then it fails and asks you to login!
So I open another browser and act as if I am not a customer. Enter my street address and viola! they do have a 25/25 plan now. But wait, it gets better. The faster plan is $10 cheaper a month! WTF?
I click another button and other FIOS plans drop down. Evidently I was looking at the “agreement plans” which means you have to agree to be a customer for a year. Now I just exited my 1 year agreement from my initial installation and I am now a month-to-month customer. But the fun thing is that if I want to stay month to month and upgrade to the 25/25 plan, I would have to pay even more…$84.99 a month. If I ante up for a year I can pay just $69.99 a month but I have an ETF of $165 if I cancel. No, I am not getting any new installations or new modem or router or anything. Just an ETF.
The ETF does decrease by $15 a month each month that I remain a customer. I find this is funny considering that is the exact price difference between being a monthly customer vs a 1 year contract customer.
The thing that really fried me was that I signed up for a 1 year agreement when I had my original install. And I understood that this was because they spent a lot of time/money installing the service inside my house with a modem/router/and the optical thing on the outside of the house. So they wanted to ensure I stuck with them for a year. Makes sense.
But why convert me to month-to-month at the end AND RAISE THE PRICE? Makes no sense. Verizon Wireless does not even screw with you that way. At the end of your 2 year contract, you own the phone and you just continue as a month-to-month subscriber on your current plan at your current rate. No increases.
On top of this I have to say that Verizon FIOS customer service really sucks. After typing in my home address, I called the 888-591-6076 that was on the screen listed as the “call us to order” number. I waited for a few minutes, gave all my security info to the guy and then he said he did not service Virginia accounts. He gave me another number (800-837-4966) and transferred me to people. I again waited and had to do the security thing again and this time the lady said she did not do FIOS Internet, just phone service. So again they transferred me to someone else who actually could help me. But I still had to spend 22 mins on the phone answering questions about what version of Windows I use (I use a Mac) and why I had not downloaded the antivirus package (I use a Mac), etc.
I hate customer service script weenies. Stupid.
Anyway, in the end, after verbally agreeing to another year, I increased my service speed by 25% in each direction and am saving $10 a month. Couldn’t that have been simpler?
