Verizon Fios

Finally I call someone the next day and she finds a way to lower the cost to below what I was originally quoted for 12 months. The DVR will only record 2 shows at a time but you have to watch one of the two. Won’t record two shows if you’re watching a third show. My DVR I had with Time Warner could record up to 6 shows. You can get a similar DVR from Verizon but they’ll charge you $10 more a month so I’d be paying almost the same as I would with Time Warner so Verizon isn’t even giving a good deal to new customers!

I wasn’t able to record a show last night so I went to the demand option to watch it today and they want to charge me $1.99 to watch an episode I could have watched for free last night! I’m starting to regret being a stockholder of Verizon. If this is how they treat new customers they will lose their customers over time. If you decide to go with Verizon, make sure you make a list of questions to ensure you are being quoted a price for the same package you currently have. I for one will look in to leaving Verizon as soon as it’s financially feasible!

1 o'clock rolls up. No show. I call. "He will be there in 5 min." "Ok great. Thanks." 3 hours later no show. I call. They say, "He tried to call you. He can't make it." Wrong. He lied. I said nobody called. Now they call him. "He will be there in an hour." Ok. Wrong. This time he does call and says, "I will be there in another 1 hour and a half???" Really. Then no show. I call them back. Nothing they can do. I say, "Well I have no service. I'm not paying for this crap." They say nothing they can do really. Guess what. I cancelled your service. When I was signing up online the guy in chat lied to me and said I would get enhanced DVR service and my bill would not go up but wrong. They tried to cheat me. It went up $20. That should have been my first clue. They're horrible and scammers.

This past weekend I lost complete service – TV, internet and phone. It’s always a nightmare calling support. This time it was beyond horrendous. I was on hold for 1 hour and 19 minutes. Not wanting to lose my place “in line” I used someone’s cell to call for ONT reset instructions via automation. Thinking this would fix my problem I hung up. To make a very long and exasperating story short, I was first promised a technician to my house the next day. With her system down, the CSR promised to call me back with the scheduled time. Of course, I never received the call. So, I called again and was told I would have to wait another day for a technician to come to my house even though the 1st CSR promised a technician for that day. And, despite my urgent plea that this was a medical emergency – my mother’s heart monitor was unable to communicate with the hospital because the phones were out – they did not care.

Eventually, the ONT was replaced and so far service is working. I have asked for credit for lost service from Saturday evening to late Monday afternoon. I was given a credit of $3.50 for 3 days outage which is absolutely ridiculous. Although I am stuck in a contract with Verizon, I am researching other alternatives. I would appreciate any feedback/suggestions. I would very strongly urge everyone to stay away from Verizon.

I'm on the phone with them for a while before I get transferred and told to play the same waiting game. I have now been sent to actual collections for a bill that I am not responsible for. Not only has Verizon wasted hours of my time on the phone, they are now messing with my credit. I would also like to add that we had a similar situation at my office where we were having issues with our phones and Verizon, once again, could not find our account and kept on transferring our secretary to other people that could not even look up our account. Is this some kind of joke or scam?

Third - they gave me a new phone # and poofed my old one without saying a thing. In fact, I discovered it about two weeks later when I was online and noticed that a number I did not recognize was tied to my account. Then I had to go through endless calls back and forth with Verizon and Comcast just to get my number back. Fourth - guide. Terrible. Unusable for those with aging eyes and very poorly organized. I don't use it and barely watch TV as a result. They tell me that there is no way to change the format to be more favorable. Fifth - "CHAT". Don't bother. Entirely incompetent. Do not have authorization to help you on many things so you will be wasting your time.

Finally, you were supposed to get some perks with signing up - Amazon Prime and Echo. This is not automatically done. You have to chase it down and I had reps tell me twice they were sending me an email with instructions. I never received anything. Today, I was told it would be 7 days before I'll see anything. Why do I have to chase something they agreed to give me? And 7 days for an email? From an internet provider? In closing - With the exception of Verizon Wireless (cellular) which is very good: I have spent, not hours, but 3-4 days of time on the phone with these people trying to resolve one thing or another. They do have a few excellent tech people, but it is still your time working with them to fix issues that should not be. I am not exaggerating. The savings is not worth it. Stick with their competition. You know who that is!

A week later another man came and told me yes it was available and they would set up a tech to come out on another date. On that date no one showed up. I called Customer Service where I fought with the woman whom explained I would be charged an install fee. I declined and said forget it. She said, "Well let's split the difference," and again I declined being the second day that I stayed out of work. She said, "Ok, I will make note and you will not be charged the fee." Well I am being charged the fee and when I called to complain, I was told, "Sorry there is not a not saying any difference," so they will not return the charge. I have had nothing but grief trying to use Fios.

I was a Bell of Pennsylvania customer, and later a Bell Atlantic customer when Verizon was literally shoved down our throats in 2000. But make no mistake about it--Verizon is the granddaughter of Bell Telephone System. The apple does not fall far from the tree. The reason why the old Bell Telephone/AT&T marriage was broken up by the federal government in the first place was their outright greed and arrogance in dealing with customers. For many, they were the only game in town. When my mother complained about poor service, she was literally told "Where you gonna go? We're the phone company." That same lousy attitude about customer service prevails even today with Verizon.

First of all, there is the misery of their "bundle" of residential services. At first, it may seem like a good idea to sign the bundle contract, maybe it seems like a good deal. But that is only at first. I watched the cost of my TV/Internet/Home Phone bundle rise from $79.00 to over $250.00 in just two years, and that was without buying any premium channels at all. As a matter of fact, their TV service is padded with loss-leader stations that no one wants (shopping networks, radio-type music stations, religious channels, foreign language channels, and retro-television stations that you can get without cable), and one must pay extra to even watch the news and weather stations! But the very worst thing about it is that when the contract expires if you do not agree to accept a new and more expensive bundle, your only alternative is the disconnect the service altogether. I have proof of this in writing. Verizon will not agree to any compromise of any sort. It is strictly take it or leave it. They do not care about existing customers at all. They advertise to rope in more suckers, and they are good at it.

For example, there was a commercial running about internet speed where some poor woman says that her internet is so slow that she'd be better off using the library. Well, what is not told is that the internet speed starts off really good, but at the end of the contract approaches, you get more and more outages, router failures and slowdowns until your computer fails to work much anymore. THE ANSWER? You MUST BUY A NEW AND MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE INTERNET SERVICE AND RENT A NEW ROUTER. But why can't I have the service being advertised to new customers? The answer is that you are an OLD customer, and OLD customers cannot have economical prices.

Then Consumer Reports said that while Verizon has top marks for cellular coverage, it gets poor marks for PRICE. SO VERY TRUE. After 20 years of being a Verizon Wireless customer, I switched to T-Mobile. My Wireless bill for only three phones WITH LIMITED DATA AND TEXTING was costing me over $300 per month. Why? Because the bill was padded with hidden fees and charges that no one at Verizon could explain, but that no one at Verizon would remove. I researched it and discovered that I was being overcharged $127 per month. T-Mobile Coverage isn't always so good, but I am not being financially **, and THAT is very important to a person living on a pension.

Finally, any time ANYONE complains or demands service, Verizon staff is told to cut the person off by referring them to Helen Waite! How? By either blocking you from the Community Forums or directly telling you to cut off your service! Example: In order to lower my bill, I was forced to accept television service with most of my favorite channels missing, internet service with speeds so low that my computers may as well be paperweights, and (worst of all) the new FiOS Digital Voice Telephone system which DOES NOT INCLUDE GUARANTEED ACCESS TO LOCAL 911 EMERGENCY DISPATCH. Just imagine that your home is on fire and you call 911 hoping that the firefighters will show up soon.

Well, under the new system you are connected to a Verizon operator who not only does not know where you are calling from, but who is also under no obligation to get you any form of immediate help at all. (There were victims of Hurricane Sandy seriously affected by this). Just imagine the horror of knowing that your child or elderly parent is trapped in your burning home, and that help may not arrive in time to save them. Furthermore, you also must sign an agreement that you will not sue Verizon for their failure to get help in time. What an abject disaster.

I was just informed that, as an old customer, I have no choice but to accept this "new system" or leave. I was actually TOLD TO LEAVE and given the disconnect telephone number, and I have the chat logs to prove it. When I complained at the Community Forums, instead of helping me, I was permanently banned. Finally, there is no posted telephone number for Verizon Customer Service on their website (I had to search the internet to find one). This means that if a person like me had problems, I have NO ONE TO TURN TO FOR ANY HELP OR ASSISTANCE AT ALL. I have literally been told to "go to hell and wait" for service.

No customer deserves this type of treatment. I am going to file a complaint with the FCC about this, but I have no hope of that going anywhere due to the current political atmosphere. People need to avoid Verizon at all costs. The aggravation is not worth it. Oh--and this is a true account. I am still a trapped Verizon customer waiting for my contract to end.

At no time did they mention that I had to pay a fee to terminate since I was under a 2 year contract, I assumed since I moved to a place where I couldn't re-enroll, this fee would be waived, but it wasn't. They also "forgot" to turn off my service for 2 months (even though I had moved out and mailed back the box). Each time I called, I was stuck on hold for 20 minutes waiting for people to talk to. I'm on hold right now trying to talk to someone with a 21-31 minute hold time. They are awful. I understand Comcast isn't much better, but Verizon has been truly awful. I'm sorry 0 stars was not an option on this review.

I called to cancel the following day and was assured I would be mailed a prepaid shipping label to return the equipment. More than a week later, it never arrived. I spent an hour online with a representative who told me they couldn't locate my order. I called back the next day and was told there wasn't an option to be mailed a prepaid shipping label and whoever told me they would mail me one lied to me. I now have to go all the way to a Verizon Store (of course they're not close by) to drop off this ** equipment that they never actually installed in the first place. AVOID VERIZON AT ALL COSTS. The most infuriating customer experience of my life.

It took me 4 times yesterday telling the rep that I wanted EVERYTHING he promised put into writing before he actually got it all in writing. If I hadn't have done that, I would have been locked into yet another contract with the wrong terms (like they sneakily did to me at the beginning of my service a year ago). I hate that there is only one option for service at my home location and that it is this company. Further, I went to pay my bill for 1/2 the amount owed, clicked on that option, and then when I went to change my payment method, the system sneakily defaulted back to the original full amount for the payment - that is a bad business practice right there.

This is a company that doesn't care at all about its customers, and every single "customer service" rep you speak to is trying to sell you something or has a long monologue for why you should do something "another way". When I called to get the payment amount fixed, the rep tried to give me a 10 minute lecture on why I should just let the payment stand as in, even though the full amount isn't due for another 15 days. In Europe, a company would never get away with such sleazy practices as we allow companies to get away with in the US - consumer protection is a complete joke in this country!

Funny, I was told it was shipped today, although the chat room person said she had it coming with the tech. As I told the person in the chat room, I guess if he shows up without the equipment I will just stick with Comcast. Hey. Maybe I will end up with two sets of equipment, although I guess they would simply double my monthly charges. Frankly, if it wasn't for their price, I would have cancelled the stupid order. My guess is after their promo discount ends, I will end up back with Comcast. I dread needing technical support. At least Comcast answers their phones. In conclusion, pray for me. :)

No one at Verizon could resolve the issue, so we turned to Google. It turns out that lots of people have had the same issue, but got around it by signing up for a VPN service. The issue is apparently that Verizon is doing a poor job of routing traffic to other sites/servers, so it doesn't matter what the speed test says, normal traffic gets routed poorly. We came across a speed test that tested connections to 5 different popular servers. No connection ever went above 20mbps, and at least two of them were always below 1mbps.

The worst part is that they wouldn't stand behind their service. They wouldn't refund the 1st month's service cost, even though it was mostly unusable, and the worst part is that even though we canceled partway through the first month, they wouldn't prorate a refund! They said it was their policy, but what kind of policy is that! I only use the service for two weeks, it doesn't work properly, and you still charge for a whole month! Don't waste your money on Fios. It's the worst service out there and they clearly don't care about their customers.

I chatted again and was told that they would forward it to tech support and they would call me on Dec. 31st at 10AM. It is now Jan 3rd and still no call. I went on chat line again yesterday and complained. I was told they make an appointment for a technician. I asked them to clarify. They said someone was going to come to my house and fix it. I asked who was going to pay for it. They said the technician would give me an estimate to rewire my cable and install new outlets. I told them to forget it. If that was truly the problem, I could do that myself and who would pay if that did not solve the problem? They were not happy and gave me a number to call. My major problem with that entire scenario is they never ran new interior cable or outlets when they installed Fios.

They reused the cable I had put in when I installed two DirecTV receivers. My cables are connected directly to the set top boxes with no outlets. So if the Fios installer judged my original cable was good enough for the initial installation, why should there be a problem if I replace it myself. Obviously, they did not have paid Tech support contracts in those days, and now they want to push everyone into taking out a contract to repair their own equipment. Something wrong with this entire scenario. This morning I was able to reprogram all three boxes and I have no idea why. I have to believe it is something they are doing.

I always had great satisfaction with Verizon and support. Now it is going downhill as fast as their subsidiary AOL, which also has non-existent Tech Support, and has been causing havoc with everybody's systems on and off for almost a year now. Unfortunately, I just opted for a new 2 year contract, but I get offers from DirecTV and Optimum every couple of weeks offering to buy me out of my contract and if this continues, I will take them up on the offer.