Quote:
Originally Posted by cromag
Getting information from anyone at Verizon is ... challenging. I say this as someone who worked for the old Bell System, the ancestor of Verizon, and really wants to like them. But Verizon has eliminated anyone who knows anything from any customer contact position -- I assume it's cheaper to go with unskilled labor and temps -- and it's very frustrating getting information from someone who knows less about their job than I do.
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I was previously a telecom admin among other things, dealing with what became Verizon. My experience was consistent. If what I wanted was an additional POTS line in my facility, I could place the order, and confirm the main number I wanted charges applied to. Two folks would call before the installation to confirm the details, the installation would happen in the specified time frame, things would work, and two folks would contact me after to make sure all was working as desired.
Step
beyond that and things went downhill fast. My shop was a call center, with multiple T1 lines taking our calls and sending them to our LD carrier. But the calls had to go through VZ's copper in our facility and get routed to a major central office that would perform the handoff to the LD carrier. When there was an outage, it was
always on VZ's side, but that was the last thing they would admin. (The issue was normally a configuration error on the big ESS5 digital switch that did the routing.) At one point, they sent a T1 tech with a T-Bird line test device to troubleshoot a problem. I knew he was wasting has time because the problem was not in the physical line. He knew it too. And he couldn't have actually
tested in any case because no one had been scheduled to work with him on the other end.
At one point I was having new T1s pulled in and an installer gave me the name and number of his boss and boss's boss. I had occasion to speak to the latter, and he was a rare person inside VZ who understood that keeping the customer required providing the service. He said "If you have a problem, give me a call. If it's in my area, I'll get it taken care of. If it isn't, I'll find out whose area it's in and give you
his name and number!" I was delighted.
I had long since given up on our sales rep. We were big enough to have a dedicated Large Business Sales Team rep on our account. But any conversation I had with him resolved to "I'd love to help you, but it's not in my area and I don't know anything about it." Getting across "I don't
expect you to know. I expect you to open your corporate directory, determine who
does know, and give me
his name and number. If you can't do that you are incompetent to hold your position." was a challenge I never did accomplish. He seemed to believe his job was to sit there with his feet up waiting for the customer to call and place an order, and anything else was someone else's job.
During that period I also got broadband in the form of a DSL line. Bell Atlantic (as it was called at the time) screwed up everything that
could be screwed up in the installation, starting with miss entering the CC number I gave for billing. It took three moths from placement of order to working service. At one point, I sat on hold for an hour on a slow afternoon at the office to finally get through to Customer Care and begin the process of getting things fixed. My boss came into my office later and said "Dennis, I heard you on the phone with Bell Atlantic. I'm sorry you you had to go through that!" I replied "It's okay, Larry. They're idiots and have their heads up their asses. I go through that over service here, too, but you
pay me for it! Doing it for free for my home service is a little wearing..."
My cable company had been pushing a triple play TV/Internet/VOIP deal for a while. I held off because it was a cost savings if you made LD calls, but I almost never did. VZ's local loop charges finally crept above the VOIP cot, and I dropped the landline. I have been
delighted to be shut of VZ.
______
Dennis