I’ve never been so frustrated in a company. Usually, bad companies have bad products and bad support. FIOS seems to be the odd combo of a great product and lousy service. I’ve had them for 4 or 5 months now and I’m about done with talking to them. Here’s a letter I sent them, I’m sure it’ll go nowhere…
“This is a general complaint letter. I have to say that in my years of dealing with different service providers, Verizon is by far the most incompetent one I have ever dealt with. The service itself has been great, I can’t complain about FIOS, but there have been a slew of problems around it. The hell of it is, none of them should have ever come up. What has happened? Here’s a list:
1) The initial service installation was somehow made as a business one despite the fact that option was never offered and never mentioned when I signed up for consumer services online.
2) It took almost a month to get an additional box mailed out to the house. It took 6(!) calls over that time to make anything happen. I was told that the problem stemmed from your inability to cancel a service call.
3) When I complained about how long it took to get the box delivered, the guy offered to give me 3 months of free HBO, Cinemax, etc. I flatly told him no since I don’t watch that stuff. Well, lo and behold, he added it anyway and I was then charged for it when that 3 months ran out.
4) The latest issue involved my billing. I signed up for auto pay, got both the printed confirmation, and the online one. I logged into my account today to find that it did not use my card and I still owed for last month despite the fact that right below that the website said that I was enrolled in autopay. I called in and was informed that “the customer” had requested the credit card be taken off the account. Needless to say, “this customer” did no such thing.
I want to be clear, the FIOS service has been very good, and every person I have talked to has been very nice. Useless, but nice. I thank my lucky stars that nothing has gone wrong, I don’t know if I could deal with the prospect of having to get an actual problem solved when the incidental things, the things that are supposed to be easy have been so maddeningly frustrating. I will continue to use FIOS as long as it stays reliable, but Verizon has most defiantly lost a potential wireless customer. I hope that you can improve your behind the scenes operations, they really are awful.”
Isaac Crawford