Verizon = Fail (AKA: "Can You Hear Me NOW?")

Not My Car (Though I Wish It Was)

I don’t often use this medium to vent, but tonight I just can’t help it.

You see, last week a Verizon salesman knocked on our front door and offered their awesome “triple play” to my wife. Now we already HAVE the Comcast Triple Play, which means that our TV, internet, and phone are all through Comcast.

Well, Verizon’s plan includes DVR on EVERY TV and also includes FIOS internet. Well, once she told me about it, that kind of got me salivating despite the fact that it would be a huge pain to get everything set up, change our e-mail addresses, etc. She agreed to the plan and we were going to switch over to Verizon.

They were supposed to install all of this in October but I guess they needed to start marking their work area early because a bunch of Verizon guys were in our yard today while I was out, my wife informed me.

Well, while they were “marking” their work area, Verizon proceeded to cut right through my cable, as well as the wire for our dog’s invisible fence. In doing so, they left us with no TV, no cable, no internet, and no invisible fence for my dog. This is all occurring at 4:30pm on a Friday, mind you. With three kids, it’s going to be a looooong weekend.

My wife got on the phone to Verizon and they politely told her that we had to call Comcast to resolve this. I had her give me the phone number so I could call them myself. This was going to be a fun one, I thought.

I got on the phone and explained to Verizon that their guys were kind enough to slice through my cable leaving us basically in the Stone Age for the next few days and that someone needed to get out here now.

The Verizon guy pretty much gave me this answer (spoken in the tone of voice used by the boss from “Office Space”):

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

“Excuse me?”, I replied.

“Well, we’re not allowed to touch Comcast’s cable. You’ll have to call Comcast”, he said.

“Seems to me then maybe you shouldn’t have sliced through it,” I replied, “not to mention that my dog will now be on the loose, and if any damage or accidents occur because of that, you’ll be looking at a lawsuit the size of Texas,” I replied.

To make a long long story short, and to spare you the tirade of expletives that followed, we have canceled our pending order with Verizon. They had also sliced my neighbor’s cable and he had called them and arranged for them to come out on Sunday and fix our cable. I will be glad to have them keep our business.

As for the dog fence, we’ll have to get the fence company out to repair it, at Verizon’s expense, believe me.

It’s too bad, I was looking forward to FIOS and multi-room DVR, but I wouldn’t use Verizon now if they were the last communicatons company on Earth. I had heard about their terrible customer service, but I had hoped for the best. Their sales guy was really nice. He’s going to be ticked when he realizes how much Verizon is screwing him on the back end.