The time had come. I had been online in one form or another for about 15 years. My 56k modem - which seemed fast when I first got it - now wasn't good enough.
Since I have had problems with our local cable company, I decided to go the Verizon DSL route. On October 3rd I placed my order and was told I would get a free Ethernet card, a free DSL modem and the wiring needed to get me up and running. I was also given a date of October 24th as the day I would be online. Three weeks? Okay, a little long but I could wait. I'd waited this long already.
On October 21st I received a call that I would not be up and running on the 24th, but now on November 10th. I was not happy, but decided to wait it out. On November 8th, I called up to verify what time I would be ready to go. The customer service representative said that I was now showing a date of November 24th and she didn't know where I got the date of November 10th from.
So we were not off to a good start, but I was still hopeful that if I could wait out the installation nightmare, I would be happy. I had talked to people who had said they were also having these problems but once it was installed it was wonderful.
On November 21st, I received a message on my answering machine stating that the work had been done and I could get online. Great! I installed the ethernet card and hooked everything up. No signal. I called Verizon and the representative stated that the phone call had to be a mistake, they were not showing that the work was done yet.
Okay fine. Three more days, I kept whispering to myself through gritted teeth. All ready to go, I was disappointed on the morning of November 24th when there was still no signal. Another phone call. The representative stated that on the start-up days they were usually given a time of 6 PM so I shouldn't worry until after then.
6 PM came and went and guess what? No signal! I was on the phone with Verizon customer service for more than an hour while my family ate dinner. The final decision was to put in "a service ticket" and they would test the line over the weekend.
Monday afternoon (still no signal) I called back. After waiting for a half hour on hold, I finally got a human being. The answer was "It's Thanksgiving weekend and we're really behind on service." I called back every day that week. On Friday, December 1st, I was just about to cancel the account when the representative I talked to was real nice and said she'd push a high priority on my ticket. She told me that they knew there was a problem with the line on their end.
I called again on Monday, December 4th to check and all I was told was that their computers were down. I was not satisfied and they transferred me to a customer service supervisor who sounded like she couldn't care less about my account. She told me that the computers were down and there was nothing she could do now, but she'd call me back as soon as they were up. Since I was going to Florida on December 7th for 4 days, I decided to wait until after then to do anything. That gave them one more week.
When I came home, guess what? No signal! So on Monday, December 11th, I called up and told them either get me running by tomorrow or I was canceling the account.
On Tuesday, December 12th, there was still no signal. I went to our local cable company and signed up with them. I took 3 days to call Verizon back and tell them to cancel the account. Their return department is so backed up (wonder why???), they said I won't receive a return label for the equipment until after Christmas sometime. They're not getting the ethernet card back.
Originally posted at Epinions.com
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