My verizon nightmare--welcome to the Funhouse

Parent Cafe
1

Not looking for advice here, purely a vent. I am a lost soul and there is no fixing this. so,

  1. I have Verizon in two houses. About 6/7 years ago, Verizon joined the two accounts at one website where I could toggle back and forth to access each. This worked fine until,

  2. last year, the website stopped toggling, and would only show the bill and info for my second home, House B. House A’s bill stopped notifications. I only noticed after the fact that i hadn’t gotten a bill from them ,and that’s when I saw their website wasn’t available. Hours and hours of time on the phone with Verizon could not fix that. All levels of tech tried. Ultimately, they suggested I request paper bills for House A, since It couldn’t be accessed by anyone. Then,

  3. Last summer, I decided to sever our Wireless from that bill, so i could access and pay that separately, since cell phones are our most important usage. So I took them off the OneBill. Which triggered

  4. Huge price increase! after much more time, they offered new, smaller package which would be like the old package’s price, but very limited channels. I said fine, I just need all the sports channels, which they gave me, except

  5. Mets playoff games are on TBS! which is not a sports channel, and not in the package! And they won’t let me stream them online, because i don’t get TBS (note to Verizon: I wouldn’t need to stream them if I HAD TBS.) Anyhoo, we are dealing with that one way or another. But,

  6. Today, I got notification that House B’s bill was due. Clicked on it, went to the website, and it only shows House A’s bill!!! (The one that disappeared on line last year, that I get on paper now–for those of you playing the home game.) So as of today,

  7. I can’t access or payHouse B’s bill.

I can’t, I just can’t face this again.

2

Oh man, I feel your pain. I can’t tell you how much I despise Verizon, which we chose because it’s the only cell phone that works where we spend time and FIOS (we thought) would be better than the previous access.

3

What a pain! I know you weren’t asking for advice, but here is one idea for getting the Mets game.

I haven’t looked too much into it myself but there is a service called Sling TV https://www.sling.com which has TBS amongst other things for only $20/month and no contract. There appear to be many “downsides” (only one device at a time for example), but still may be worth it.

Here’s a review:

http://www.cnet.com/products/sling-tv/

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It actually makes sense that you don’t get to stream a channel you haven’t paid for…And one might want to stream when they are away from home. What really doesn’t make sense is Time Warner doesn’t allow you to stream TBS when you are away from home…you must be on your home network!)

4

garland: so very sorry -

verizon is the only cell service that works where I live. I don’t have it for internet or tv.

When I have had problems, though nothing on the order of what you are experiencing, I have just gone in to one of their stores. It has to be a true verizon store. Some offer their services and have the sign, and you can even pay bills there, but they aren’t “real” verizon stores. Don’t ask me to explain this. At a true store, I have my list of what I want, and I just stay there until someone figures out how to do it. This may require working through several levels of employees. Sometimes they have to call the main office. Sometimes the main office has to call back. I just don’t leave till I get it fixed. This may take most of a day. When I am investing that much time, I also have them go through my bill item by item and ask what fees can be deleted. I ask for good customer discounts. I ask for inconvenience discounts. They always give me discounts. At that point they just really want me to leave the store. Everyone to whom they are trying to sell new services is listening to my very polite but firm list of problems that need fixing and start to ask questions.

You specifically said you weren’t asking for advice. So I am sorry to offer it. But just in case you haven’t already spent a day or so in a store. I have never been able to accomplish anything on the phone with verizon, although I used to try that route. Of course, I don’t have a day job either, so I can just hang out there all day till they satisfy me.

5

Ouch, I feel your pain. If it’s any consolation, Uverse, DirectTV and Comcast are not much better in my experience.

6

Its perfect that I have a FIOS ad at the bottom of my page. Feel your pain, garland.

FIOS says you can add TBS for $10 for the month and then cancel that package the next month. Is that true? I have no idea…

7

@sax --I think I need to add it for the length of contract, but maybe I should ask, now that we made it to the next level of playoffs!

@ClaremontMom --looked into Slingtv, thanks! We are going with mlb’s companion broadcast. It’s not the main stream, and wonky, but sort of works.

@alh --don’t mind advice, no need to apologize. I just didn’t want anyone to think I expected solutions. I may try what you said, if I get a free day. I like your persistence approach, and I do get what you mean by TRUE verizon store.

Thanks, all, for sympathy.

8

I’m sorry, I really feel for you. My parents have Verizon and they have had nothing but problems. On the other hand, I have AT&T and they are equally terrible. I’m convinced they hate me because I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan (yes, they’ve got me by the *****). As well they should! My revenge for their poor treatment of me is to gobble up as much free data (which is not quite as “free” as it sounds, btw–they throttle) as possible every month. Plus, I’ve eliminated all my accounts (their internet is unbelievably bad) except the cell phones. I also rant on their Facebook page whenever the urge strikes me. I need a dartboard with their logo as the bull’s eye.

9

@Clarmontmom --the thing that made me nuts about the TBS thing, was that it was a stream from MLB that had to be paid for, regardless. It wasn’t something free I was asking for. So blocking someone from buying that seems churlish to me.

10

Add me to the list of folks who think Vzw has it’s head up its you know what. All the issues we deal with could be avoided or simplified it they’d prioritize an improved customer experience. (I know how easy it could be.) Even the stupid envelopes that come with the flap on the wrong side annoy the bejeesus out of me. I probably have lots of “disgruntled customer” comments in my contact history. One of my retirement programs is actually via them, due to some mergers.

Funny about the stores. My local one is also unable to resolve account or billing issues- can only deal with sales or upgrading services.

Good luck, garland.
I want BBC America and can’t add it unless I upgrade and get, you know, to the package that includes the 40 golf channels, some overload of trash. P’s me off. May be changing tv providers.

11

Just this week:

Me: Hello?

Them: Hi, this is AT&T. We are upgrading everyone in your area to Uverse. I would like to schedule an appointment for our service person to come to your place to do that.

Me: I don’t want to upgrade. I like POTS. When everything else goes out, electicity, cable, etc, POTS keeps on working! I love your POTS service. It never lets me down.

Them: For the about same price you get more …

Me: Do I have to upgrade?

Them: For the about same price you get all these extra …

Repeat last 2 statements about 3 or 4 times, then:

Me: You never answered my question. Are you getting rid of POTS? Are you telling me there is no alternative, that I must upgrade?

Them: Well, I can’t tell you that it is mandatory. But all of the competitors are digital now.

Me: I don’t want to upgrade. I won’t schedule a service appointment for that. And if I have to upgrade with you, that’s when I will start to look into all those competitors.

Them: OK. And a fast disconnect.

It’s like those scams where the scamers talk fast and try to convince you that this is the only option. Never answering a question directly. It really bugs me that they presented it as needing to schedule a service call, not as a change of service.

I work in software. I am up on technology. We run a business from our house. We have cell phones, tablets, about 8 computers, our own server, cable internet, router, switch, wifi, etc.

The only thing that has never gone out is our POTS lines. That 100 year old technology works for me. I want to keep it!

12

I think these companies conspire to make our lives miserable.

13

I only have V for cell phones and I have had good success dealing with their customer service. I bought a new phone a few months ago and when transferring my contacts they did something wrong and lost them all. I was furious and asked for compensation. The store manager said he’d credit me $50, but when I got my bill it was on,y $10 credit. I called customer service, told them my story (there was nothing in notes about what happened or was offered) but the gave me the additional $40 credit immediately. I didn’t even have to ask to speak with a supervisor.

Regarding your cable package, I used to add and take off tiers all the time (I have Timw Warner ) but it might be different if you have a yearly contract. I know Fios has some two year contracts where I am if you sign up and get the $300 rebate debit card.

14

We keep our T-mobile plan because it is hassle free in comparison to Verizon and AT&T (note - I said in comparison. It sadly isn’t perfect but their customer service is better). Their coverage is not nearly as good as Verizon’s coverage, but we have far fewer hassles and it is much cheaper, so we are happy to remain long time T-mobile customers.

My husband also runs a business and heavily uses his cell phone. It has worked well enough for him all this time.

15

Garland. Verizon says you can switch, add, drop packages every 30 days without changing contract time. The question is whether to believe them or not. We use fios and have 2 packages and pay $84 a month for that and Internet. To us and our location that’s a low price. We share the kids netflix.

We use consumer cellular (AT&T based) for our smartphones. $54 a month, no contract, and no problems so far…although I have read some bad reviews . …you can increase and decrease what you need with a text. So far so good.

16

I have Verizon strictly for FIOS internet because I have no other choice. I have disconnected my home phone with them because of all the telemarketing calls I used to get. I agree their service is absolutely horrible and it takes forever to get an agent on the phone and it takes forever to resolve a problem after that. They market everything they possibly can on the phone but I flat out say no. If asked why I tell them I have had very bad experience with them and only use them for FIOS. For cell service I use AT&T for years and haven’t had any problems with them.

17

We got rid of our land line and switched to Verizon cellular for our main line. BLECH!!! The reception is so poor. I usually end up calling back the person on our Time Warner Cable line. Annoys the heck out of me.

18

I don’t even care about the quality of anything I have with them; it’s been fine. I just want to see the website and be able to pay the effin’ bills. That they’ve fubarred that so badly is utterly frustrating. Cuz they’ll contact me if I DON’T pay them.

19

Comcast is just as bad, if not worse. We had a cable converter box that died - they shipped us a new one - but neglected to send shipping label to return defective one. I didn’t want to make a trip in person and wait in line to return it. So - called - explained that I just needed the shipping label to return the bad one. A few days later - arrive home to find a box on the porch - another cable box!

Call Comcast again - now I need a box and shipping label to return two of them. A few days later - I come home to find a large box on the porch - two more cable boxes! We now had three new ones we never requested plus the defective one. Sensing this would go on forever, DH returned everything in person.

No one there gives a damn about doing a decent job.

20

garland: I just don’t believe they can’t fix the internet/website/billing issue for you. I can believe they may have to set up two accounts, but not that they can’t do that if necessary. I can believe whomever you have spoken to thus far doesn’t know how to do this.

For a long time, I had to have two different accounts with century link. It took a while to get that straight, but it was possible. I had two different account numbers and paid two separate bills. Heaven forbid I send one check for both. That would not work…