Verizon Does Not Have Enough Phone Lines
I’ve complained about Verizon twice before, and still haven’t gotten around to my omnibus Verizon entry. The latest issue is that I cancelled my Verizon DSL over two months ago, having switched to Speakeasy, which, although much more expensive, provides so much better service (both by way of connectivity/throughput and customer support) that it’s actually worth it. I called Verizon at the time, and asked them to cancel the DSL, which they said they would do immediately. The next month, DSL was still on my bill, but I figured it was probably a billing cycle issue.
The following month, the DSL charges were still on my bill, so I called to find out what happened. They had no record at all of my prior request to cancel service, but said they would happily cancel it now and refund both months. I asked them if there should have been a paper trail for the earlier request, and they said there wouldn’t be. I asked them if I could have some sort of paper or email acknowledgment of my current request, and the representative insisted it wasn’t necessary (and apparently just “not done.”).
Now again this month, I still have the charge on my bill, and the last two months have not been refunded. When I try to call today, however, after maneuvering through several menus to get to a human, I am informed that not only are all representatives currently serving other customers, but there are no available phone lines for holding, and I should call back later. Click.
How is it that this country’s largest phone company doesn’t have enough phone lines?
(I suppose another question is how is it that they manage to retain so many customers. But that’s a question for another day.)
(Any Verizon folks out there who could comment on this entry and provide some illumination?)
Adam G Jan 28
As far as I can tell, the reason Verizon does things like this is that they hate their customers.
When I ordered DSL from them (only option for broadband in that area, augh), they accepted the order, and two weeks later told me DSL wasn’t available on the line, which came as a surprise to me, because we had DSL on it three months ago (my roommate moved out and cancelled the service.) I called them, and found out that what had actually happened was that they lost the order (how the heck do they manage to lose an order when I placed it online? doesn’t it go into a database?), “but oh, I’ll just put in a new order now and you’ll have DSL in no time, sir.”
A few weeks later, the Self-Install kit, which supposedly contained everything I needed to install DSL arrived. It contained two (identical) software CDs, five line filters, and…no DSL modem. I had to call them again and work through several layers of people who were confused at the concept that the Great Company could have made a mistake. At long last, I got them to issue me a modem, and finally, a week later, had DSL.
Sinc then, I’ve been getting calls and (snail mail) letters from them every few weeks, asking me to confirm that my experience with their service has been positive. I just wish they’d gotten it right the first time.
Kamaraju Kusumanchi Jan 28
My previous cell phone carrier was sprint, my current cell phone is from verizon. I can only tell that service of sprint is as worse as that of verizon.
While taking the sprint plan, the sprint representative told me that for a one time charge for $5, I will no longer be charged anything for roaming. I thought it was too good to be true and called up their customer service and confirmed it. I then opted for this option and paid the extra $5 bucks in the next month. But in the next month, I was charged for roaming. When called the customer service, they told me that it is a billing update problem and should be rectified in the next bill. But nothing has changed in the next couple of months. These things take so long and none of the customer service representatives know what conversation we had with other representatives. There is no case number or anything like that. Finally I ended up paying for all the roaming charges and shifted to verizon. The whole process just sucks….
Just for the record, Even sprint does not provide any paper/email acknowledgement of any conversation made over the phone.
It is sad that the customer service of the top two cell phone service companies (verizon, sprint) is next to nothing.
Adam G Jan 28
First, a quick correction – Verizon Wireless is a different business entity than Verizon the telco.
That being said, the fact that VZW is consistently rated as having the best customer service of the cell providers says a lot about the awful state of the cell service industry…
Lukas Jan 28
It’s nice to know that it’s the same around the world. Here in Germany we have the same problems with the T-Com, which is the biggest telephony provider here. Be it T-Com, T-Mobile or T-Online, the service just plain is not there.