The Reluctant Shopper

Over the past week or so I have been pushed to do something that I really despise: I am the designated shopper in my household.

Ivette has been sick for almost two weeks, and it got to the point where she could barely leave the house. She does all of our shopping, the only time I go to a store is to pick up something very specific, like a computer-related item, a book, etc. Before last week I was averaging less than one trip to the supermarket PER QUARTER.

Not anymore.

It only took me a day to figure out why I never go shopping: because I really despise it. I hate the parking lots, the stores, the crowded aisles, the merchandise selection, the checkout process, etc. Basically everything.

The worst thing is that no matter how much I insist, either Ivette can't put together a shopping list if her life depended on it, or she does and I can't find half of the things she asks for.Or worse, she won't believe me when I claim that I did not find the item:

Me: I couldn't find the Cascade dishwasher pellets with bleach.

Her: You sure?

Me: Yup, all I found was the ones with Dawn.

Her: Those are the ones you idiot!

Me: Nope, they said Dawn, not bleach.

Then two days later I found the real item: Cascade dishwasher pellets with bleach AND Dawn. Victory!

Then there's the weird. At Target there's this weird pecking order thing, for example during the afternoons women shoppers frown at men of working/married age shopping for household items. They look at you like you are some kind of intruder, or that you are doing something wrong, like keeping your woman chained to her bed, or worse.

Then there's the pharmacy. The moron that laid out the store did not allow for room for the two lines, so you spend most of your time moving back and forth to allow shopping carts to roll by. Yes, because everyone that walks into the store decides that she HAS to roll her cart thru the god damn pharmacy line even if she needs nothing from that corner of the store.

An Open Letter to Verizon's FIOS division

(picture related)

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.

Lost Season Premiere tomorrow

For those three of you that still hold hope that Lost will shed off the suck, the show is back for a new season starting tomorrow (1/31) at 8/7c. In the not-so-remote possibility that your mind is playing tricks on you and you have stared forgetting about the suck, you can refresh your memory, legally and for free, at ABC's HD streaming site. It even works on OS X.