Verizon (for those unaware) is a humongous telecommunications company with a very large presence in the United States. It’s more or less guaranteed that anyone you talk to in the US knows what Verizon is and what they do.
Verizon’s infrastructure is also humongous (obviously). This means they can offer anything to do with telecommunications. So, if you’re the type that uses one company for everything, Verizon can usually do it.
When I first moved to Florida two years ago I decided to go all-Verizon. Why? Because it was easy and they had the lowest price. Furthermore you can combine everything using their “One-Bill” service to make managing services easy.
Or so it would seem.
Here’s My Story
After saving up for a while I was able to upgrade apartments (known as a “flat” in UK). The new apartment is literally 100 yards away from the old one. Remember that. 100 yards away. However, it’s a different physical location, so my Verizon land-line and DSL must be moved.
Okay, simple process, right? Call Verizon, inform them you’re moving and move the service. Get informed of the installation date and have everything activated on a specific date. Simple. Easy. Right?
Wrong.
During the phone call with Verizon, I was informed the scheduled activation of my land-line service was for the April 15th. The DSL for the 22nd. Being that I absolutely depend on my internet connectivity for my job, I asked if they could possibly have the DSL activated on the 15th along with the land-line.
The person I spoke to stated she wasn’t sure but that she could transfer me to someone who would help me out. At this point I spoke with another rep who said yes, there’s a good chance I could get my DSL activated on the 15th. I was assigned a work order number. Everything was to happen on the 15th. Done deal.
The day of the 15th happens.
Land-line: No dial tone.
DSL: Not activated.
I call Verizon. I am routed to dial-up internet support to a person who can barely speak English and has absolutely no clue what DSL is.
After hashing it out with her I’m transferred to someone else. I inform him of what’s going on. He promptly puts me on hold for about 15 minutes.
He comes back and states there’s basically no way to get my DSL activated on the 15th (that day). I informed him the work order would indicate otherwise. He starts quoting the “rule book” to me and says it’s not possible. After not getting anywhere I hung up out of frustration.
After regaining my composure I call back and speak with someone else. Again I am quoted the rule book and told that my service absolutely positively could not be activated until the 22nd – even though I have a work order stating otherwise.
I hung up on her too. I’d had enough at that point.
Verizon in no uncertain terms outright lied to me. I was told services would be activated on a certain day and none of it happened. And when I called back I was fed nothing but excuses.
Today I called Brighthouse and ordered service.
Want to take a guess at when it will be activated?
Tomorrow (the 17th).
No 5-day waits. No “we won’t work with you” b.s. The tech will show up tomorrow with cable modem in tow, set me up and I’m ready to go. And yes, it’s that easy.
Why?
Here in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, Bright House is the largest cable provider. But the difference is that when you call, you are speaking with a local Florida office and not some distant call center in the middle of nowhere. The techs are all local, the service is local. All of it is local.
But Here’s the Big Kicker
When I called to cancel my Verizon land-line and DSL, I was finally routed to a Tampa Florida office. After all this b.s. I went thru, now I get a local office?
Want to know something else? The Verizon rep was fantastic! She was pleasant! I was almost (repeat, almost) sorry I had to cancel!
If I had direct contact with a local Verizon office in Florida, I am 100% sure that absolutely none of the b.s. I encountered would have ever happened. Reason? Because they can contact local dispatch easily.
The Moral of the Story
If at all possible (even with big telecom), have your dealings only with local offices. Find the phone numbers and keep track of them (because they’re not easy to locate). When you stay local you get better service under most circumstances.
And the Golden Rule of Verizon is this:
I have never complained about Verizon products. The product has never been bad. It’s the customer service that’s horrible. If you have Verizon service of any kind and like it, good for you. Just pray you never have to change anything on your account via customer service or you’ll end up in a nightmare like I did.
Sounds like my experiences with Sprint.
This sort of problem happens a lot whether dealing with local or out of state service representatives.
I have found the best thing to is, not to sound annoyed, ask for the reps name, phone number and location and then ask/insist to speak to a supervisor.
When the supervisor comes on ask for their name, ask if they are indeed a supervisor and ask for their phone number/extension. Write all these names down in case of more problems or if you need to call again.
Then discuss the issue with them and more often than not you will get satisfaction.
I agree with Roger. Having been in both your position (customer) and also being on the other end of the phone (cell phone company) I agree in that if you don’t get the service that you expect you go through the process of elimination.
1. Speak to the rep. If you get nowhere, try another one.
2. If after the second rep, you still get nothing – speak to the manager/supervisor.
3. If after the manager/supervisor, go to the NEXT level. I know it sounds kind of strung out by then, but demand it. They have no right in refusing to allow you to speak with the first or second manager.
4. Still no luck? Advise them you wish to be transferred to the cancaellation department to cancel your service (this can work even if you are on a contract). It’s almost a surefire way of getting; a) what you wanted originally, or b) a real person with some form of “outside the box” thinking and authority to make whatever was supposed to happen, happen.
BHN are pretty good IMO, Rich. Only whenever you get the techs to come out, keep your fingers crossed they are actual Brighthouse techs and not the contractors – the BHN ones are fantastic!
Sounds plausible at first, however as one who has worked help desk myself:
1. Doesn’t work. You can speak to rep after rep until you’re blue in the face. Each one will be a mindless slug “reading from a sheet” so to speak.
2. The pecking order works like this: 1st level (idiots), “Team lead”, “Shift Supervisor”, Manager, Regional Manager, etc. etc. etc. Even if you get to the shift super, they will not be able to help you any better than the first level. And bear in mind this is all before tier two support and takes at least 45 minutes to get there.
3. You can demand all you want to speak to higher levels of the food chain. Doesn’t matter. You’ll still get quoted the rule book over and over. And each time you’ll have to re-explain your situation over, and over, and over…
4. I did cancel.
The thing you want to do when at all possible is get OUT of “the loop” of corporate cubicle crap and get to the local dispatch office. This is NOT EASY and it’s a crap shoot whether you get there or not. When you do, count your lucky stars. Unfortunately I wasn’t that lucky.
By the way I’m active on Brighthouse already as I write this. No b.s. A local office is less than 2 miles away from me. The tech called in advance to set up the service (as I requested), and he actually arrived 30 minutes early (very nice).
I’m-a a happy guy now.
Forget the entire thing, smoke signals worked for years before the telephone.
If you think it’s difficult to deal with a phone company as a
subscriber, try dealing with them at the vender level. By this I mean selling communication services to a communications company. They won’t tolerate the same b.s. that they hand you. Their marketing puke will call your marketing puke and he will say to (you the local tech),
“We are really need to make this work!”. You can’t transfer
them to Calcutta!
So much for process management. “hell lets call the local guy”
But isn’t this sort of level 1 tech ’support’ (if you can call it that) typical – not only for telecoms. You get a drone reading from the sheet often in a accent that makes the entire process much more difficult than it needs be. Often their supervior has the same limitations.
I make a point when I get reasonable service (I guess beceause there are so many poor examples, that reasonable or better stands out) to thank the tech and _then_ ask for their supervisor – to let the supervisor know they are doing a good job.