Ninety Minutes of Customer Service Hell

Tangents and rage to follow...

See this?

This is the excerpt from my Google Voice call log that shows the length of my phone call with Verizon FIOS's customer support.

In general, I've had very little in the way of problems with any of my various Verizon services. ...Which is a good thing, because dealing with telcos' customer service departments is never anything less than a frustrating trial. To be fair, unlike my recent run-in with Sprint (on my mother's behalf), I came away from things mostly satisfied (or, at least as satisfied as one can be having had to call customer support in the first place).

At any rate, the long, bloody story.

I'm a convenience fan. Thus, I use things like electronic billing. I've had my Verizon bill and other utilities on automatic payment plans for years, now. To most of my billers' respective credits, such arrangements have been mostly without incident. That came to a crashing end, today.

I'd gotten email notification from Verizon that my auto-pay was due to be processed within the next 48 hours. I limit my exposure to auto-pay problems by having a special eBill checking account linked from my main checking account. Each month, as my direct deposits come in, a budgeted amount is transferred from my incoming checking account and distributed to my bill-paying account, my investment account, my "rainy-day" account and my "playtime" account. That auto-pay warning email is handy, because it allows me to be 100% sure that my bill-paying account has sufficient funds to cover any pending direct-pay arrangements.

When I looked at today's notification, the number looked higher than I was expecting. So, I logged into my Verizon account to see what was up. Perusing my bill, "Oh: my promotional-discount for upgrading my Internet to the 50/50 plan has expired." ...but then I noticed a $0 line-item for a service that I'd thought I'd canceled previously.

Then I noticed that my prior month's bill was $90 more than I expected. Given the $0 line item, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. So, I clicked on the "detailed bill" for the prior month. "MOTHERFUCKER!" There, on my bill was a $90 auto-renewal charge for the "canceled" service ...number 2 of 2 (really amusing that the three prior years' versions of the package were billed in four installments).

I'd managed to not notice the out-sized bills because there was always enough in my bill-pay accounts to cover things. Granted, the slack-balance was lower than expected, but not precipitously so. At any rate, it was a service that I'd previously tried three different ways to cancel:

• You see, last winter, I'd had some glitches with my NHL Center Ice option. The tech support guy I spoke to was able to resolve the technical problem. However, after a couple of years of NHL Center Ice, and recent acquisitions of suitable mobile devices, I was looking for alternatives. So, while I was on the call with the tech support guy, I'd asked, "can you ensure that my NHL Center Ice doesn't auto-renew after this season." He'd informed me that he'd be able to put the note on my account and that it should not renew come the 2014/2015 season. Thus, I assumed I would not see further NHL Center Ice line-items on my bill.
• Come May time-frame of this year, I was doing one of my periodic reviews of my accounts. "Huh... There's still an NHL Center Ice line-item on this account. It's a $0 thing - maybe it's a leftover from the just-past season". Still, I called in to verify that the auto-renewal was, indeed, set to be canceled. The person I spoke to verified that such was the case. Dunno why, but this made me think "ok, yeah: that will not renew itself this fall" and went on my merry way.
• Around the end of September/beginning of October, I opted to pull the trigger on getting an NHL GameCenter Live subscription. It was slightly cheaper than NHL Center Ice, and it let me watch hockey games via my XBone, my Rokus (awesome when visiting my mom since I could still see hockey using her Roku), my cell phones, my laptops and my notepads. With NHL Center Ice, I'd always been stuck only able to watch from home (yeah, I coulda done the SlingBox thing, but that was more effort than I wanted to deal with). With the new NHL online service, I noticed I was having some issues with streaming-quality/stability. I figured, "upgrade to a higher speed-tier - that'll fix it". So, I logged into my Verizon account to do the online upgrade. As Iwas reviewing the account prior to upgrading, I noticed another $0 charge for NHL Center Ice. "Ok... well, there's a button here for letting me alter my services: I'll just use that to delete this thing." I ran through that process, but, by this point (finally), I'm suspect of the damned package actually deleting. Before I committed to the cost of upgrading my Internet speed, I opted to use the web-chat tool to speak to a Verizon representative. I pointed out my continued problem with the persistent NHL Center Ice subscription. I asked if she could ensure that it got deleted. She verified that, yes, it was set to be deleted. I hit finish on the upgrade-transaction, thinking that I was now good to make the switch from NHL Center Ice to NHL GameCenter Live.

Obviously, that last thought was in error. So, I girded myself to deal with phone support. I hit the "call me" button on my Verizon accounts page. A few seconds later, my phone rang.

I navigated the call tree, selecting the "billing questions" options. I got connected to a CSR, and laid out my problem to her. She informs me, Oh, this department only handles payments not billing issues or credits. I think to myself, "Okaaay... Of course the billing questions option wouldn't allow me to actually do anything about a billing problem". But, "whatevs", right? She tells me she'll need to transfer me to the department that handles such issues.

About a minute later, another woman in another department picks up. We do the dance of "what's your phone number" so she can do an account lookup. I inform her, "I don't have a phone number associated with my account: I don't have a Verizon landline and every time I've tried to get my cell number (actually my GV number since 2009) associated to my account, my account's phone association fails to update". This isn't super surprising, given that whenever I've tried to use the web-tool to update my profile, it tells me my GV number is not a valid phone number. Fuckers.

I'd always assumed, however, that the CSRs had a different access method to the account records and could force the number into the appropriate place. Given that the number always seems to fall off my account, I'm assuming that Verizon's accounts system has some kind of de-linter that looks at profiles and prunes out any "bad" data. Too bad that de-linter is as broken as their web UI's number-validator. Probably the same code segments.

 So, I tell her, "I can give you the account number to look-up, directly". She insists that she has to look up by phone number. So, I give her my GV number - along with the admonition that it probably won't work. As expected, she tells me that she can't find an account with that phone number. Shocking, I know. She prompts me for other information so she can find my account. Apparently, they have a half dozen or so options to find an account, but giving them the actual account-number is not a valid option.

Ultimately, she finds my account. She then asks me what my problem is. I tell her the long story of the ghosts of NHL Center Ice plaguing me. I ask her to remove the plan from my account and reverse the charges. She tells me that the plan has been removed from my account. To which I reply, "...and the charges reversed, correct?"

She replies that she can't refund me the charges.

I ask her if she's serious. I point out to her that, what she's telling me, is that Verizon has siphoned $180 out of my account for a service that I didn't want and haven't used, and, are now going to make it so that I can't watch the channels I've already paid for.

She tells me she can re-activate the plan and that I can get the auto-renewal canceled at the end of the season. I want to scream at her, "are you fucking crazy? Have you not heard one fucking word of my description of how failfuckingtastic canceling auto-renewal has proven to be?" Knowing that this is unlikely to prove fruitful, I only respond by reiterating the prior travails I'd gone through. She informs me she only has record of the first service call and that she can't help me any further other than the options given.

I fight back the urge to completely lose my shit (yes, it's possible to "even", even in the face of borderline Kafkaesque "customer service"). I ask her to connect me to her supervisor.

She responds by telling me that the wait for a supervisor will be at least thirty minutes. I respond "whatever", because, at this point, I'm committed to riding this hell-train to the end of the line.

Long-silence. Seriously - it was a good three minutes before I hear her ask "do you want to wait for the supervisor?" She had seriously been sitting there, waiting silently - not understanding my "whatever" to mean "yes, connect me, I'll wait".  So, I had to explicitly state, "yes, put me on hold for a supervisor"

(Commence crappy hold music...)

(...Continue with atrocious hold music)

Twenty minutes later, the original CSR breaks into the hold music. I'm thinking, "wait, did I seriously just wait another twenty while she waits to put me into the supervisors' hold queue???" Fortunately, she was breaking in to tell me that I was next up in the queue for a supervisor.

Huh... It was actually going to be a warm-handoff. That's a good sign, right?

Eventually, a new voice comes on the line, identifying herself as the supervisor. She asks me for my account info. We go through the "there's no phone number associated with the account" dance. I'd be apoplectic, at this point, but I've worked for the companies that became Verizon and otherwise had to deal with telcos, in a professional capacity, to know that only calls get transferred, not support session or account information data. So, I just shuffle morosely through the steps.

She opens my account. I walk her through the sequence of events, noting that the first CSR had indicated a lack of records on Verizon's side that supported my case. But, I was able to point to the fact that I'd upgraded my account to support my position that I had previously made requests to cancel the NHL Center Ice service. Still, she had no record of the chat session. Apparently, with Verizon's disjoint information systems, just because you're talking to someone using their web-chat tool doesn't mean your account will reflect it. Fortunately, because of the January customer support call, it had established that I'd previously communicated with them. And, even though the tech support guy hadn't actually noted the cancellation request (he probably had, but, given Verizon's crappy inter-department data-transfer, the note probably got dropped in the transfer from one Verizon IT pond to another), it, combined withe the timing of the upgrade, was enough for her to justify issuing me the credit for the service.

So, 81 minutes of phone-hell later, I appear to have finally gotten the service canceled and the charges reversed. Still, I should probably log in, next week, and verify both things.

The worst part of all this? While there is an alternative to FiOS, that "alternative" is to Cox. I could probably link-out to the various Cox customer service horror stories that actually made the evening news, but Cox's CS issues are well known enough to make that redundant. At any rate, assuming the service is actually canceled - and stays canceled - and the charges do end up reversed, I don't currently have to consider dancing with the Cox-monster.

Verizon's Still Got a Few Kinks to Work Out of FiOS

Ok, first, let me start by saying that when Cox advertises saying that their customer service is better than that for Verizon FiOS, this is not just marketing, it's verifiable fact. I had Cox as my video and internet provider for several years. So, I had several occasions on which I had to call them. I've now had Verizon for a little over eight months and I've called them more than I called Cox over the entire multi-year period I had their service.

Each time I called Cox, I was able to quickly navigate their call-tree and get a human on the line within a matter of a few minutes. Each time I've called Verizon, it takes at least ten minutes to get through their damned call-tree, and then you wait another 10-30 minutes just to get to speak to the first human in the chain you inevitably have to talk to.

Notice that I say first human. Each time I've called Verizon, I speak to a minimum of two people. Worse, with each hand-off, I have to go through the whole drill of "no, I don't have Verizon phone service" and provide alternate identifying information so they can find my record. Now, why, when they transfer you, the next CSR doesn't have all your info come up on their screen as part of the transfer process is beyond me. With Cox, I generally had a warm hand-off; on those occasions where I didn't, the next representative at least had all my info already on their screen.

Now, I was calling this time because, when I went to turn on tonight's Flyers game, I was met with the "you don't subscribe to this service" screen (and told to call their 800 number to change that). So, I called in. It took just shy of ten minutes to navigate their call-tree just to get to the point that I could be put in a hold-queue. I then spent just shy of fifteen minutes waiting for the first CSR. He got on the phone and we did the whole "find the account" dance. He locates my account and informs me, "that programming option's not on your plan. Does your set-top box not offer you the option of adding it?". I reply, "no, otherwise I'd not have called in." At which point, I'm informed that I'll have to speak to someone in their subscription/add-on services group and that I should, "please hold".

Another six-plus minutes passes on hold. As expected, the CSR that answers has us go through the whole no Verizon phone service dance. Ugh. He finds my account and then looks through it. Apparently, last winter, when I got my FiOS service, it was already at the halfway point of the season. My NHL Center Ice package only for the second half of the season. That half-season package was set to auto-renew in January. I start to laugh at how awfully moronic that was. I then ask him to go ahead and try to get the full-season package added and the half-season auto-renewal removed. It takes him another four minutes to navigate his computer systems (why is it every time I call a CSR organization, they always say "sorry, my computer's being slow"?). He gets the change sorted out. Unfortunately, it will take a minimum of 20 minutes for the change to show up on my set top box, and might even take until midnight for the change to take effect (depending on my market).

Whatever. I was already 40+ minutes into missing the game I wanted to see. Judging by the Flyers' web site, I wasn't really missing a game I wanted to see (they were losing 2-0 to the Columbus Blue Jackets by this point). Maybe, by the time I next tune into NHL Center Ice, it will be up and running on my set top box and will be showing a game I'll be more happy to see.

So, uh, Verizon: you get yet another big, fat "F-" for this customer experience (as you did for the four, prior incidents). And, that's an "F-" by way of comparison to Cox, who isn't exactly known for being top of the heap for customer service.

Finally Got My FiOS Fixed

Well, it only took three trips for them to do it, but, finally, my FiOS appears to be fully fixed. I just did a test download of RedHat 5.5 DVD ISO and got 2.2 MB/s (not Mb/s) for the entire download. Previously, I'd start at about 1.5MB/s for the first few tens of MB, but then the transfer would slow and slow and slow and finally stall.

Dunno why it took three trips to fix, though. Numerous breakdowns in the customer service process...

When I originally reported problems in late August/early September, it was because I had no connectivity at all (and, trying to use my cell phone's browser to find the FiOS tech support number was a rather painful experience). Internal networking was fine and I still had video service. Unfortunately, the FiOS WiFi router wasn't able to pull an IP from its upstream router at the PoP. Once I finally got a VZ tech on the phone, he had me run through the usual script. Wasn't until he discovered that he couldn't remotely reach my ONT that it became evident they'd need to send someone out to address it. Unfortunately, as part of the troubleshooting, they'd had me fully de-power the ONT since they couldn't remote-reboot it. This action not only hadn't fixed the problem, but resulted in me losing video. The ONT eventually reset itself five hours later, but, as of bedtime, that night, it was still offline. Worse, VZ couldn't get a tech to my house for two days.

Donna was NOT happy at the prospect of no video or internet for two days.

As I noted, previously, it finally (sort of) fixed itself sometime in the five hours between going to bed and getting up for the day. We had TV back and basic internet. So, Donna wasn't quite so freaked about the two days to get someone out to look at it. I was relieved to not have to listen to bitching for two days.

Later that afternoon, VZ called to indicate they had a FiOS tech free that day and would I want him to come out. "Happily," I replied. Dude showed up and looked at things, but didn't have any parts to replace the faulty ONT, but did replace the coax-splitter. He indicated that he'd note the problem in the case and someone would be dispatched the next day with parts.

It was rolling up on 1600, the next day, and no techs had either called or arrived. So, I contacted VZ. Apparently, the ticket had been closed by the prior tech. WTF? I was still experiencing slowdowns on long downloads, so, I asked that they open a new case and send someone out to do the parts replacement work.

As with the first phone call,  no techs were going to be available for the next day, so, I'd have to wait another day for a tech to come out. Whatever: video was working and internet was mostly working (I could send/receive email, just not download large files).

The tech came out two days later. I was expecting that he was going to replace the ONT that the first tech was supposed to have replaced. Instead, he noted there were problems on the coax line. So, he replaced the splitter (two in two visits). The connectivity was still weird, even though the line was showing "normal" on his diags. So, he replaced the router. He then rolled out.

At this point, we're two splitters and a router (and two tech-visits) into the fix process. Still, I'm having issues with long transfers and, since Halo: Reach came out, I noticed that I'm also having stability issues with XBox Live. Given that I was trying to make achievements in online multi-play, this kinda sucked.

So, this week, I called to see if, maybe, finally, we could get the ONT replaced as was originally expected with the first visit. As with prior calls, tech-dispatch was gonna take two days. Whatevs. So, I agreed to an appointment for Friday, October 8th, 2010 between 08:00 and 12:00. They indicated the tech would call when he was on his way.

It was rolling past 11:30 and I had yet to hear from the tech. So, I went online, found the FiOS tech support number, navigated the call tree and got in the hold-queue. Ten minutes into this process, I got a call from the tech. He was letting me know he'd be here in 15 minutes. So, I hung up on the lovely FiOS hold-music and waited for the tech to show up.

The tech was prompt. He said he'd be here in 10-15 minutes. He got here in 11 minutes. Given the vagaries of traffic in NoVA, I was just happy to see him within 30.

I described the problem and the ongoing issues with getting the device replaced. He asked to see the unit, so, I took him to the basement. He popped the case and noted, "wow, this is an old one". I was kinda like "*BOGGLE*" as it had just been installed in February or March. But, whatever: not really relevant. He asked if it was ok to pull the unit so he could replace it. I noted that I wasn't immediately using the connection and could get/send email from my phone if it was critical. He popped the unit, took it out to his truck, brought back a replacement and popped it in. He tried to do some remote-office work on his VZ laptop, but, the cellular-wireless card in his laptop wasn't getting good signal in our basement. So, he excused himself to his truck so he could take care of the administrative details to get the unit to come online.

He said it'd be about 10-15 minutes, so, I walked him to the door and sat in front of my blank TV and useless laptop and waited. About 9 minutes later, video signal came back on the TV. I then noticed that my laptop had just noted the arrival of new mail. So, I figured, cool, shit's back online. So, I hit up RHN to establish a test download. 2.2MB/s.

Tech came back in about five minutes later. I let him know that things were looking good. I had video and was running a download that was holding speed and had done so at a higher rate and for a longer time than any recent ones had since prior the ONT replacement. He gave me his contact info and headed off.

So, at this point we look good. Took a while, but, we got there.

The FiOS experience has been interesting. Within the first month, I'd had to replace the HD-DVR set-top box. Then, this whole fiasco with an (apparently old yet newly installed) ONT failing that resulted in the replacement of two co-ax splitters and a WiFi router before finally replacing the faulting ONT. I've had FiOS for a little over half a year. That's a LOT of hardware death. Oh well. We're good, for now.

Fuck You Verizon

So, apparently, at some point in time, Verizon Wireless signed some kind of agreement with Facebook (as they have with other online "services") to automatically install an uninstallable application on your smartphone (I'm assuming all their smartphones and not just the BlackBerry Storms). This was probably a while ago, but, it wasn't until tonight, when I unistalled the FB app I'd installed several months ago, that I discovered it. You see, after I'd selected the FB application for deletion, upon reboot, there was a different FB app icon on my home screen of my Storm. WTF?

Unfortunately, whenever Verizon Wireless does this shit, they make it something that can't be deleted. All you can do is hide the application. Because VZW does this so frequently, I've created a "Junk VZ Apps" folder where I can move these unremoveable applications. I'm sure, once VZ figures this ploy out, they'll come up with some kind of countermeasure.

Shit like this makes me consider ending my plan with them. My BlackBerry is chronically short on memory, as is, and you can't offload apps to the SD card (where I have plenty of storage capacity). So, I don't install that much on it, to begin with. I've called VZW to complain about these unremoveable installs, before. They "helpful" techs inform me there's nothing that they can do but that it's just a stub. It's not really taking up device memory.

I find this somewhat hard to believe. Surely that image on my screen consumes some memory to render (etc.). Surely, even if it's just a stub for downloading the full app, it takes some device memory to put that stub on my phone. Stop eating my already chronically short device memory, fuckers.