[Coco] Stories of Internet Connections - was:Color LOGO

[Steve Bjork]

First, please change the Subject line when you change the Subject!

As for Internet connections, Verizon has two services (three is you 
count dial-up) out here in Los Angeles.
The older DLS is a dieing service with nothing but problems with their 
hardware and customer service. I have spent 9 hours over two days trying 
to get my DSL turned back on after they disconnected it by accident. 
(Then they charged me $160 for early disconnect fee.)

|And there is Verizon FIOS, a bright story with 21th century technology 
and great customer service!

FIOS is fiber optic cable to the home.  While some other services (AT&T) 
just run fiber optic cable to your neighborhood and the last few hundred 
feet via Cat 5E or 6 cable, FIOS is 100% optical to the side of your 
house.  Once there, a box splits it into Telephone, TV and Internet 
services.  Both TV and Phone services are great with better quality 
anything that else out here!

While those services are great, the Internet speed is killer.  I have 
the lowest speed package at 20 mbps down and 5 mbps up and you can move 
up to 50 mbps.  (From what I understand, there are even fast speeds, if 
you ask.)

The price for my bundle (all three service is about $100 per month) and 
is lower than cable's poor quality $170 for the same setup.

Yes, I know it's sounds like I'm try to sell you on FIOS.  (And maybe I 
am.) But that's only because it is the first service that I ever had 
that was great from the start and it keeps getting better.  It is only 
service that feels like it's truly using 21th century technology.  
Everything works right and it's fast!

But I'm not the only one in tech community that loves FIOS.  I know 
people that feel FIOS is number one factor in picking a new place to 
live.  They just will not move to a place without FIOS!

By the way, I never had a service outage in the year and 1/2 that I've 
had FIOS.  Both cable and DSL would go out monthly.  FIOS just works!

Steve

On 4/3/2010 8:37 AM, Lothan wrote:
> From: "Gene Heskett" <gene.heskett at verizon.net>
> Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 12:17 AM
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Color LOGO
>
>> And right now I don't know what the bandwidth is, my phone line 
>> dropped out
>> Wednesday about noon and the only reason I called verizon is because the
>> Public Service Commission here requires the name of the contact 
>> person you
>> talked to at vz when you called in the trouble report.
>>
>> I did this 3 weeks ago when the line died the last time, and when I 
>> called,
>> the D...head in India wouldn't put me through to repair service until 
>> he had
>> completed his own version of the Census form.  That outage was from 
>> about
>> 4ish Friday to about 8pm-ish Sunday.  They first said it would be fixed
>> before 5pm the next Wednesday!  Needless to say I went ballistic & they
>> finally came back and said sometime Saturday, but Saturday came and 
>> went, as
>> did most of Sunday.
>>
>> But when they 'fixed' it, my bandwidth dropped to about 35k/sec & I'm 
>> paying
>> for 180k/sec.  So I sent them another message via the web page this past
>> Monday after putting up with it for a couple of weeks.  It went up to 
>> about
>> 140k/sec the next day, Tuesday & then the phone, on that same copper, 
>> died
>> around noon the next day.  So I filed with the PSC. late Wednesday 
>> evening.
>> I have a neighbor that has had so much trouble he just calls the PSC 
>> on his
>> cell phone.  Got an email from the PSC acking my complaint Thursday 
>> morning,
>> & vz has the gall to ask my why I filed with the PSC when they deign to
>> calling my cell phone about 4 this afternoon.  Without calling 
>> anybody names
>> or questioning their family tree (and boy was that testing my 
>> patience), I
>> told them exactly what I thought was going on & what it would take to 
>> fix
>> it.  Then she tried to put me off till next Monday afternoon & I went
>> ballistic again.  She went off to check, and they are supposed to have
>> someone in town tomorrow, seems somebody stole a few hundred feet of 
>> copper
>> that was in use from another place so they had to be here anyway.  A 
>> likely
>> story IMO.
>
> Sounds a lot like AT&T in my opinion. Before I moved back I called 
> AT&T to have them install a second line in the house and to set up 
> phone and DSL service. When the service day finally arrived, the tech 
> claimed he had a ticket to install the line but he did not have a 
> ticket to terminate the line into the box or to activate service. I 
> immediately called AT&T to complain and they claimed the line would be 
> terminated and activated the next day. Three or four days went by 
> before anyone bothered to show up to terminate the line. When the tech 
> finally showed up, she claimed the line would be activated at 6:00 PM. 
> Why they have this craptastic schedule is beyond me. Anyway, 6:00 PM 
> rolls around and the line is still dead. I call AT&T and they say the 
> line will be activated at 6:00 PM the next day. I politely explain 
> that I have a confirmation letter in my hand saying the line would be 
> activated a week ago. It just falls on deaf ears. Needless to say, 
> this goes on for three or four more days with the same line of lies 
> from AT&T -- the line will be activated at 6:00 PM the next day. I 
> finally scream that unless this phone and DSL service is activated 
> within the next hour, I am cancelling the order, refusing to pay for 
> anything, and contacting my attorney for breach of contract. I had to 
> go through hell with managers, but in the end I finally discovered 
> that customer service accepted the order but failed to complete the 
> order with internet services or with accounts payable. In other words, 
> if I hadn't screamed, I would never have service activated.
>
> I finally get the line activated roughly week and a half after the 
> contract date and then they billed me three times for the same service 
> on the same statement. It took four months just to straighten out the 
> billing mess they created and they keep sneaking monthly subscription 
> fees to their lame anti-virus software into my statement so I have to 
> keep calling to get it refunded.
>
> To top it off, they insist on selling (and reselling and reselling) 
> these cheap Motorola 2210 DSL modems for something like $119. Look it 
> up on Google and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone saying anything 
> good about this cheap box. It runs so hot it never lasts more than six 
> months to a year in this humid climate, the firmware is so horrible it 
> often can't renegotiate a PPoE connection, and I'm not sure whether 
> the firmware is just ridiculously slow or it's throttling the 
> connection (although I suspect it's just really slow). Some I've 
> replaced with Actiontec DSL modems (significantly better DSL modem for 
> about $40) and the others I've put in bridge mode with the router 
> handling the PPoE connection.
>
> I'm not saying Verizon is significantly better, but I have never 
> experienced this level of incompetence from Verizon. And I do mean 
> literally that since SBC acquired AT&T, AT&T has been utterly 
> incompetent. If I had an alternative in this area, I would drop AT&T 
> like a hot potato.
>
>> This is what you get when the phone company has a franchise and locally
>> nearly zero competition. Yeah cable is here, and nearly 2x the money.
>>
>> What we need today are free markets.
>
> I completely agree this is exactly what we need, but it is not going 
> to happen in the near future.
>
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