Verizon screwed me, again [telecom]

Sounds like you are dealing with HellAtlantic. Some years ago I was working a trouble ticket and had to call back east, I called a minute too early for their normal call time and was hung up on. This was a military circuit, so I passed it on to AT&T and that got it resolved, but all those years it has left a sour test in my mouth.

Now that it is Verizon and I was GTE, at least most of the time old GTE areas on the west coast you can get help, I'm not saying that there are not problems, but I have never been treated badly.

***** Moderator's Note *****

I don't know where the call-taker was located, but I know she's a liar and a discredit to her peers. I'm a "New England Telephone" customer, since I live just South of Boston, Massachusetts.

BTW, does anyone know if the "Customer Service Representatives" are/were unionized? Orders to use such shoddy and arrogant tactics wouldn't be tolerated by any union employee I ever knew, so I suspect the "Let them eat cake" attitude which I experienced is from a non-union organization where the managers don't have any personal pride or conscience, and where they can squeeze their subordinates into deceiving customers, falsifying records, and giving lip-service to the customer care standards that I grew up with.

Bill Horne Moderator

Bill,

It was my understanding that almost all Verizon people are unionized.

Fred

The Service reps if the are company employees are unionized, but Verizon has a lot of contractors working for them, and that includes me, but I'm a Lifetime CWA member and retired. No matter which company I worked for I'm treated as employee.

As I had said, the way I was treated with that trouble ticket and at that time I'm sure they were union.

All the telco's frontline CSRs are now lowest common denominator type positions, with less and less training daily. Much like frontline CSRs for any industry. Ie. typical ISP frontline support is reboot your computer and call back. Repeat 4-5 times and you might be able to get past square 1.

Most frontline ones are not. The only unionized CSRs I've dealt with are usually the high-level back-end support types. Problem managers, sales support, order writers. etc. Frontline sales/support are all not.

Actually, due to the many changes since Divesture, it's my understanding that most Verizon (or any other telephone company) employees are NOT unionized these days.

Likewise, due to changes most services are not regulated.

As someone mentioned, many of them are contractors, so they're not even real employees.

I suspect people you may reach at any 'telephone company' these days are on commission and under pressure to sell you additional services.

I was surprised to learn that bank front end people--tellers, service desk--are on commission and under pressure to sell banking products. That shattered my impression of 'staid bankers'. They're hustling like everyone else.

Regarding Bill's original problem, I've heard of stuff like that happening with cable companies and other telephone companies.

Competition has not improved service, rather, it has lowered it.

Follow up...

. Was your request ever processed?

. Did you speak to any managers or supervisors about the foul up, and if so, what did they tell you? Sometimes they'll give you a big discount for future service as an apology.

***** Moderator's Note *****

Nothing has changed. The restrictions were never removed. I just hanged up the phone after talking to yet another minion, who told me that his supervisors were all "in meetings" and that it would be finished by midnight tonight.

I'm going to write a snail-mail letter to the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs & Business Regulation's Department of Telecommunications and Cable: what used to be called the PUC when utilities made a pretense of actually serving the public. I've done it before, and it produces quick results: it's sad how Verizon only pays attention to people with real, demonstrable power.

Bill Horne Moderator

*Premise:* *Conclusion:*

Lisa or Jeff: This line of "reasoning" has emotional appeal, but I don't buy it.

Bill: Speaking of competition, how many vendors did you identify who could provide you with a static IP address at your residence address and a MIR (=minimum information rate) at or above 128 kbps?

***** Moderator's Note *****

Over in DSL reports, there is information about the Verizon "Chronic Trouble" (a.k.a. "Presidential Appeals") phone number: (800) 483-7988.

Information about it was also posted on alt.online-service.verizon (see the thread "Verizon presidential dispute?" started on 1/11/11.) I've no 1st hand experience with this number. I've seen reports that it gets fast results. It is described as being for the old Bell Atlantic territory, but it still might be worth a try for you.

Good luck,

-Gary

***** Moderator's Note *****

I dealt with the "Presidential Appeals" staff fairly often when I was a technician at N.E.T.; if I do say so myself, I was fairly good at solving unusual troubles.

The only thing I remember was that I always felt like I was dealing with another world: a place where all they wanted was to solve a problem and keep a customer happy. It always seemed like someplace I could seen in a vacation brochure, but never visit, and it saddened me.

In this case, though, I'll stick with the Commonwealth's process: I want someone to keep a record.

Bill Horne Moderator

I proceeding through a formal complaint against Cox Communications and AT&T over the failure to honor my Caller ID privacy flag. California makes it relatively easy for reasonably educated consumer to file a formal complaint without having to have an attorney. And, it's free, to boot.

The law in California is quite clear:

2893. (a) The commission shall, by rule or order, require that every telephone call identification service offered in this state by a telephone corporation, or by any other person or corporation that makes use of the facilities of a telephone corporation, shall allow a caller to withhold display of the caller's telephone number, on an individual basis, from the telephone instrument of the individual receiving the telephone call placed by the caller. However a caller shall not be allowed to withhold the display of the caller's business telephone number when that number is being used for telemarketing purposes.

This is the state legislature speaking, not just the PUC.

Yes. But correspondingly, most Verizon customer service is not handled by Verizon people.

It's interesting, if you call for FiOS support, you get one out of (I think) three US tech support facilities. The Hampton one seems to be the best of the set. These people are generally clueful in all of the centers, and it is a relatively easy matter to escalate a difficult problem. These people are all union.

If you call for Verizon ADSL support, you get to talk to someone in India who has no idea what they are talking about and is very unwilling to escalate the call to a clueful person. None of these people are union.

I don't know about the POTS support but I would imagine that again Verizon goes out of their way to shave costs on the service. And that almost certainly means contracting it out to clueless bozos.

--scott

In this state (New Mexico), I was told that to file a complaint with the PUC required getting an attorney involved. Of course, that's when we had the lame Governor Richardson in office. Now that we have Susanna Martinez (Republican and a trim the fat approach to state government), I wonder if that might have changed.

I've dealt with PSCs in different states. I've involved the MD, NC, SC, and GA PSCs in disputes I've had with the telephone companies in their states [for my own personal telephone service]. And I've involved HI, OK, and a few others in my dealings with telephone companies on behalf of one of my employers from years back. In all of these proceedings, I always got satisfactory or better results. Never did I have to involve an attorney.

I think it is sad that I've had to resort to this so many times. It says a lot about the state of management of our telephone companies, doesn't it?

I've heard some people say that divestiture made our phone system worse. I don't agree. I was seeing the same kind of things before divestiture. I don't think that there is really all that much difference.

It shocks me that economists are the high ranking people in the telephone companies. The engineers should be near the top as well. After all, the phone company wouldn't run without them.

***** Moderator's Note *****

I think there are _very_ few cases where a citizen _must_ hire a lawyer to deal with his government: of course, most such claims really mean "We're lazy and incompetent, so hire a lawyer to do all our work for us." If anyone who works for the government told me I _had_ _to_ hire a lawyer to deal with them, I'd get really busy proving them wrong.

It may be sad that "Ma Bell" only respects naked political power, but it's also understandable and inevitable. Ma Bell is still a monopoly for practical purposes, and with that status goes a legacy of arrogance and callousness that expresses itself in racism, cruelty, viciousness, and let-them-eat-cake hauteur.

I was part of it; I ought to know.

Bill Horne Moderator

Most residential IP services are simply "best efforts" so there is no defined MIR (nor guaranteed latency, for that matter.)

The point I was trying to make is that in most parts of the country there is no competition at all, so it's disingenuous to attempt to blame problems on competition. Ineffective state regulation and lack of a level playing field for new entrants seem more to the point.

Just a reminder that this is Verizon (the former GTE et al) and not Verizon Wireless, a different (and more competent) company.

***** Moderator's Note *****

Verizon is the former NYNEX/Bell Titanic merger, and it picked up GTE etc. after that.

I can't speak about Verizon Wireless' competence, since I haven't been their customer for many years, but at the time I changed to another cellular company, their rates were exorbitant. Sorry, but I don't feel like I should give them a pass on competence when they handed the market over to Cingular by gouging their customers.

Bill Horne Moderator

...

Hint: Watson, or his sidekick. It's easier to reach the governor of Wisconsin than a human at Verizontal Repair.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

My recent experience with Verizon in Maryland is little better. I used my girlfriend's land line to get to service. I had transferred my land line to Consumer Cellular after a year of bad service. Verizon told me three times that the service had been terminated. I got an email the next day from CC that Verizon had finally transferred the number. If I hadn't called I wonder if it would have been even longer. And when did they start making you dial through mail hell on an operator call. At least Fire Police are top menu. The problem with the cell phone was that I could call but incoming calls got busy (the problem with my land line.)

Mark