An Open Letter to Verizon's FIOS division

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A month ago I decided that it was time to put Comcast to rest and move on to Verizon FIOS. There was nothing really wrong with Comcast, but the FIOS offers were simply unbelievable.

Yeah, I'm an idiot.

I ordered 15MB/15MB Internet service and was told that my delivery/installation appointment would be one month away. My appointment was today.

For the past month I was getting automated recordings from Verizon at least every week, reminding me of the installation date. I even took the afternoon off in advance, since I expected it to be distracting enough.

Then the shit hit the fan.

For starters, the installer was over an hour late. Once he showed up, he proved to me within minutes that he didn't know what the fuck he was doing. He insisted on going to my master bedroom closet, even after I told him three times that each of the 300+ units in our condo complex uses the HVAC closet as the communication lines tunnel, all lines enter each unit through the HVAC closet.

The installer got a little hostile, and insisted on checking the deployment box outside. Before I could open my patio door, he had walked out of the building and tried to walk around, which is really stupid since that had him walk 10 buildings down the street before the first opening that allows access to our back yards. Dumbass.

After some lecturing, he told me there was no way in hell he could get the job done. The fiber was in the attic, four stories above, and he would need access to each of the units above mine so he could pull the cable down. He also needed a power outlet in the HVAC closet, since there was none his solution was to run a power cord out of the closet, stapled to the god damn ceiling, across and into my living room and plugged into one of the outlets in my living room.

Dumbass x 2.

I offered him to get the engineering/facilities guys for help. After all, we have an agreement that allows them access to any unit for this kind of emergency. No, he replied, he would absolutely refuse to enter a unit unless the owner was present.

He ranted for a few minutes while Ivette was having the engineering guys get permission to enter each unit. She even got them to put a proper power outlet inside of the HVAC closet, something the Verizon guy did not think about. He left before she was back. Before he left he handed me a phone number to call to re-schedule.

It took one hour, and four calls, to make it to the point in which I could pick a new appointment.

"The next appointment we have available is April 27."

Let me get this straight: I had to prequalify to order this service. I ordered this service on March 1st, 2008, and I have to wait two months to have it installed because Verizon did not finish their cable runs as they should had?

Why the fuck do I get letters from Verizon every two weeks begging us to switch to FIOS?

I told her sorry, that's not going to work. Please cancel my order. It took another half hour, and two people, before I was done with the cancellation process.

Now, I am willing to allow the one-month wait to install the service, but them walking in here and deciding the place is not wired is just bullshit. If they know they are going to run a 4-6 hour service call (their estimate, not mine) then why the fuck can't they send a guy sometime in the four weeks before, to do a site survey?

How to do a timesaving FIOS site survey:

1. Hand a qualified tech the address for a potential installation.
2. Tech drives to the address, then asks the customer to allow him to walk through and look for the wiring cabinets, closets, etc.
3. Tech inspects the point in which FIOS hits the property and sees if there is any work left to do before he can do the end user installation.
4. Tech says goodbye and goes to the next address.

I imagine that for most inspections the tech can be done in 15 minutes or less. If he didn't find anything wrong, he can write a service note for the actual installer, to save him the hassle of figuring out where the cabinets and the entry point are located. If he finds something wrong, he has plenty of time to arrange for Verizon to fix whatever needs to be fixed.

Instead, we have technicians running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Assholes. And worse, they try to make it look like it is the customer's fault that there is a problem.

As soon as I was done with Verizon, I called Comcast and had them upgrade my Internet tier to 16MB/2MB, a $10 upgrade. This 16MB is before any speed boost. The funny thing is this is the third time in less than two years that I ask for the upgrade. For some reason they keep dropping it from my bill. The guy from Comcast was extremely nice, even after I told him that I almost deserted to FIOS.

"Uh, you don't want to do that."

Speed tests throughout the evening show me pulling 22MB/2.7MB. Fuck You, Verizon.

Questions for Verizon, not that I give a shit anymore:

1. Why does it take a month to schedule an installation in the wealthiest county in all of the United States?
2. Why are multi-unit dwelling deployments not going through some kind of quality assurance process? At the very least, Verizon should send somebody to make sure that their wiring contractors are deploying the right equipment.
3. Why not spend some money to train your customer support personnel?
4. Would somebody post a memo that just because a phone number is used for the account it doesn't mean the phone is a Verizon account?
5. Do you find it acceptable to have technicians that refuse to listen to knowledgeable customers? Especially when the customer has information that can make the installer's job easier?
6. How come Comcast has service appointment time guarantees and you don't? Comcast techs (at least here) are very timely and courteous. Your installer was sort of an asshole.
7. If a customer calls complaining about a fucked up installation about waiting for a month, is it wise to tell said customer that the next available appointment is almost a month away? Shouldn't this be a red flag situation to try to appease the customer by trying to right a wrong and come up with a better service appointment reschedule?
8. How come you guys spend so much money sending those begging letters without checking if the service is really available at that unit?
9. How come you guys spend so much money on marketing and can't afford a site inspection ahead of an installation appointment? I am guesstimating an expense of up to half a billable hour per each installation, which is already budgeted at 4 to 6 hours.
10. How come Verizon doesn't talk to condo associations and their engineering folks to preempt deployment issues at large condo complexes? All it takes is to send one engineer to visit each condo area and take a look at the possible floorplans. A recent college grad should have been able to come here and, in less than two hours, visit the three standard unit layouts, and maybe write a half-page cheat sheet to be used for any FIOS deployment to any of these 300+ units.

Test Shows Comcast’s HD Squeeze In Virginia - 3/27/2008 3:12:00 PM - Multichannel News

Comcast has said it can pack three high-definition signals into space typically used for two—without viewers noticing a drop in quality. But at least one viewer has.

A member of AVS Forum, a community site for audio/video enthusiasts, has posted the results of his comparison of the compression rates for 10 HD channels offered by Comcast and Verizon Communications’ FiOS TV in Northern Virginia.

The user, “bfdtv,” said his test showed Comcast is delivering certain MPEG-2 HD channels at bit rates as much as 28% lower than Verizon, resulting in lower-quality pictures.

[From Test Shows Comcast’s HD Squeeze In Virginia - 3/27/2008 3:12:00 PM - Multichannel News]

I can say from first hand experience that most HD channels in Comcast for Reston, VA don't look as good as one would expect. The problem is that sometimes the content is not exactly HD, instead it is up-converted, and many times this is done poorly. A&E is sometimes shown simply stretched to fit the screen.

There are always a couple of channels that look really nice most of the time. One of the local PBS affiliates always looks fantastic, and the network channels look fine as long as they are running proper content, like for example Heroes, House, Bones, etc.

Comcast: FCC lacks any authority to act on P2P blocking

The man who spoke for Comcast at Harvard last month has told the Federal Communications Commission that the agency has no legal power to stop the cable giant from engaging in what it calls "network management practices" (critics call it peer-to-peer traffic blocking). Comcast vice president David L. Cohen's latest filing with the Commission claims that regulators can do nothing even if they conclude that Comcast's behavior runs afoul of the FCC's Internet neutrality guidelines.

"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," concludes Cohen's thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11. "Bearing these facts in mind should obviate the need for the Commission to test its legal authority."

[From Comcast: FCC lacks any authority to act on P2P blocking]

In other words, "Fuck the FCC."
That's the funny thing about common sense: you can't teach it. If you find a loophole in federal law, why brag about it? All you are going to do is draw attention to yourself and the loophole, and before you know it, the loophole will be closed.
Do you really think that a government agency is going to let a private company give them that UFIA out in the open? And in an election year?
Of course not.
Here's what I don't understand: why act so bold when they are no longer the only game in town when it comes to broadband? Here in North Virginia they are still strutting around as if they own Fairfax County. Seems their suits haven't figured out that Verizon has been selling FIOS here for a while.
The other thing I can't understand is their billing. Every month the bill is different, and my tiers never come out straight. Are these people actually interested in making money? The one thing I know for sure is once I call them to tell them about my new FIOS line they'll start throwing discounts at me, as if it is going to make a god damn difference.