There is no longer any need to build any more prisons. No longer any need to send anyone to jail. Just let them try to get a query about their DSL service answered by Verizon’s customer service. If you made even the hardened criminals suffer the redirects, scripted prompts, wait-times, international departments, American-accent voice activated system, wait-times, redirects and dead-ends; they would repent and never return to crime again.
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Inspiration to make things better.
Hey, at least Verizon didn’t set your house on fire. These people weren’t so fortunate:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18314
August 10th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Hey Piers,
Now, now – I would be careful not to complain or Verizon may just drop you – just like Sprint did to their customers! :)
I’m with you. Verizon is a bear. I am so happy that I am no longer with them.
mm
August 10th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Actually, while I’m all for bashing lousy customer service, the Verizon DSL help line has been surprisingly good for me.
I’ve never waited on hold > 5 minutes, and their techs are polite, knowledgeable, English-speaking and happy to explain the root cause of problems to my satisfaction.
I must admit I dreaded that first call, but it all came out right fairly quickly. Maybe I’m lucky, but I’m *impressed*. And relieved. And thankful.
(Pretty sad compliment that we now expect lousy service from our telecoms & airline providers, eh?)
Paul McN: Don’t know if it was there when you posted the link, but note the Verizon PR guy’s correction of the supposed facts of the incident. Not nearly as good a story but I do like that they weighed in.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:10 am
I tried to sign up for Verizon DSL when i got fed up with my slow TimeWarner cable connection and, what I thought at the time was, bad service. Now I realize why TimeWarner can claim to have best customer service on their ads because their competitors, such as Verizon, take bad service to new heights.
So here is just a brief overview of my experience with Verizon. I signed up for self-installation. After waiting for two weeks for my line to be activated I found out that I to have a technician come to my house. I scheduled an appointment from 5-7 on a Tuesday night. Then the day before my appointment I get a call from Verizon informing me that they could not guarantee that the technician would come within the two hour window because they can only commit to arriving within a 6 hour window.
I cancelled the appointment and tried to reschedule for a weekend but of course their technicians don’t work on Saturdays or Sundays – which ultimately means I would need to take off time from work to install the DSL (not a very customer-focused approach).
At this point K realized that if it is so hard for them to set up a new customer then I had no faith in the quality of their service to existing customers. But my woes were not over yet. It took me another three weeks and 4 hours on the phone to be able to cancel the service and get Verizon out of my life. Thank god it is worth it.
August 12th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Had major issues trying to get DSL service from Verizon. Was trying to switch from Time Warner but after a month and a half of incopetence from Verizon we gave up (still took two additional weeks to be able to cancel the Verizon service).
August 12th, 2007 at 1:40 pm