isen.blog

“Verizon customer service” is right up there with “Military Intelligence,” “Jumbo Shrimp” and “Clean Coal.”

They’ve proved it again. FIOS went out last Saturday, taking down its phone and Internet service. It was going to be fixed Monday, then Wednesday. Now, no date, but they’re working on it.

Before you tell me to go re-read “Buy as many nines as you need,” hear my disclaimer! I **do** eat my own dog food. The other line into my house is copper. It works fine. We have cell phones. I have two forms of wireless Internet redundancy too; a Verizon EVDO USB dongle and an AutoNet Mobile Router. They’re OK, they’re just slow and capped at 5 GB/mo and 1 GB/mo. FIOS they ain’t. But I’m not totally without.

Thursday afternoon. Five days later. FIOS is still out.

The context is shaped by the storm that blew through southwestern Connecticut the weekend before last, on March 13 — twelve days ago. There was lots of wind. One guy was killed by a falling tree. Many streets were closed by downed trees, poles and wires. Much of the town lost pole-based services. Our electricity, for example was out until Tuesday, March 16.

For a while, our town was, “The Invasion of the Bucket Trucks.” Nevertheless, at our house, cable, phone, and FIOS stayed on for the duration! Repeat: the storm did not take out FIOS.

FIOS only went out last Saturday, after the last visiting bucket-truck crews had gone home.

Initially, out of empathy for the overworked crews, I was patient. I called in the trouble on Sunday. A Verizon technician came out that afternoon. He replaced the (now 4-ish year old) battery in my ONT. When I said, “Isn’t that the customer’s responsibility?” he replied, “Yes it is, but Verizon is a nice company.”

He told me that the problem was four poles down the street. It would be fixed tomorrow, i.e., on Monday.

On Monday evening, no FIOS. I called Verizon customer support again. I was on the phone a long time. No answers were forthcoming. Finally the service rep told me he could not reach the dispatcher, but, he said, our FIOS would be fixed on Wednesday.

That was yesterday. Still no FIOS.

Yesterday evening I called again. This time, after I explained the Monday promise and the Wednesday promise, there were no more promised dates. I was told that the call center I had reached was only responsible for home visits, not for field repairs. Getting this piece of information took an hour. I learned there is no Verizon number to call in (or get info on) a field repair. Make that an hour and a quarter.

The Verizon call center was in Texas, deep in the heart of Ed Whitacre country. The service rep told me the storm clean-up crews were still working. I told them they had gone home last Saturday. That was news to her.

Today I saw an orange ladder four poles down the street. Nobody was there, but the ladder alone is a hopeful sign. I walked down the street to the Verizon CO-on-a-stick; right above it was a bird’s nest sticking out of one of the bulges in the wire. No repair crews were in evidence.

Then I got a call from the dispatcher asking me about the new trouble I had reported last night. New?

The new weekend is coming. Maybe I can call Ivan Seidenberg’s office this afternoon, so his Executive Response Center folks can reach the field repair crews before weekend overtime kicks in . . .

If Verizon service had a five-nines guarantee, which it doesn’t, they’d owe me 1369.9 YEARS of flawless service to make up for the outage. That’s right, my FIOS would need to run until 3380 A.D. without another problem. I know, I know. The five nines thing only applies to individual pieces of equipment, blah blah. Even so, a five day outage of critical infrastructure like this is unforgivable.

Lying, even when the lies are caused by the absence of information that exists and is knowable, makes it even more egregious.

If I bust my cap on my Verizon wireless data service because I’ve had to use it instead of FIOS, you’ll read about it here.

Technorati Tags: CustomerService, fiberoptics, FIOS, Redundancy, Verizon