I’m sure we’ve all had our issues with Verizon from time to time and I’m sure there are true customer service horror stories. However I’ve got to give them credit today. Last night my wife came home and no internet, phone or TV. She assumed that the problem was something related to our router. I didn’t get home until after 9pm. After 15-20min of rebooting, reseting, logging into router control ect I couldn’t get anything to work. I spent another 15min trying the Verizon online diagnostic tools from the wireless connection on my phone. All came back dead.
The county is doing some flood control work behind my house and temporarily using my yard and the adjacent easement to haul equipment, gravel and dirt to the work area. So I suspected that maybe they broke the line, which runs directly under the easement where they are crossing.
Without any other options the dreaded call to customer service.
After going through the whole reset, reboot, process again while on the phone and then waiting for the remote tech to try and connect to the ONT he concluded that the problem was with the outside line, and that they would have to schedule a tech out. I’ve had outside line issues before with Comcast at two houses. I and waited 6 weeks to be restored 20yrs ago at our current home, which drove me to DirectTV until FIOS Came to town. So I was prepared to be without service for the weekend and then have t take a day off from work next week only to have someone coming out, going through the motions and then saying that someone else would have to come back to trench a new line. That’s exactly what happened 20yrs ago with Comcast, several times.
To my surprise the phone tech said I could pic any two hour window I wanted from 7am to 7pm today. Remember I was on the phone with them at 10:30pm last evening. He said the tech would call me a few hours before arrival and give me an update if they were running late or if they were available earlier.
So today the guy called me around 3:30 and said he was on schedule for 5pm. When he arrived, he determined that fiber optic cable from the drop to my ONT has been severed. However he said, he was prepared to lay a temporary cable on along the curb to get us up and running tonight. After hooking up the cable, he determined that our ONT box was not working correctly and that may or may not have been related to the construction. So he replaced that, along with the battery backup inside. However since we were getting a new ONT he also needed to go up to the community hub and replace some hardware there to match the new ONT. Bt the time he got done he had been working outside in the sleet and dark for about 2-1/2 hrs. He was super nice and polite and not once did he complain about the conditions. So far pretty good service.
When he fired up the system we had phone, internet but no TV. This is where I was really impressed. I have bypassed the crappy FIOS router years ago for a better, more secure wifi router and just bridged the FIOS router to use the MOCA Coax connection for On Demand and Guide. When he saw this I was totally expecting him to say, oh well, it’s NOT the Verizon setup so you’ll have to let me reset the router back to factory settings. However after I explained what I had done, and that it’s worked this way for over 5 yrs, he was totally cool. He said, let me look for another source of the problem and if he couldn’t find anything then maybe he would have to reset the router to default and then I could redo my setup after he left, which would have been a total pain in the ass for me.
So he changed splitters, checked boxes, tested cables, which were all inside, spend another hr outside testing the video signal at the hub and the ONT and couldn’t find any problem. So I was sure he was going to reset my whole system. I asked if he had a stock router on the truck and if he would be willing to bypass my setup entirely and test the system this way. He said “Sure, that’s a good idea” came back with the stock router and sure enough everything except TV didn’t work. By this time he had been working here for 3 hrs, but still had a totally positive, professional and helpful demeanor. He went back outside in the rain and tested some more and after about 30 more min, just decided to replace the brand new ONT with another one on the truck. We had TV immediately. Then we reconnected my old setup and everything worked as it did before yesterday. He just left at 9pm.
I could knock Verizon for a lot of reasons, but this is the very first time I’ve had a tech out to our home since we subscribed over 15yrs ago and it was a first class customer service experience. Thank you Troy!
For those interested this is what my yard has looked like for the past 9 weeks.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
The county is doing some flood control work behind my house and temporarily using my yard and the adjacent easement to haul equipment, gravel and dirt to the work area. So I suspected that maybe they broke the line, which runs directly under the easement where they are crossing.
Without any other options the dreaded call to customer service.
After going through the whole reset, reboot, process again while on the phone and then waiting for the remote tech to try and connect to the ONT he concluded that the problem was with the outside line, and that they would have to schedule a tech out. I’ve had outside line issues before with Comcast at two houses. I and waited 6 weeks to be restored 20yrs ago at our current home, which drove me to DirectTV until FIOS Came to town. So I was prepared to be without service for the weekend and then have t take a day off from work next week only to have someone coming out, going through the motions and then saying that someone else would have to come back to trench a new line. That’s exactly what happened 20yrs ago with Comcast, several times.
To my surprise the phone tech said I could pic any two hour window I wanted from 7am to 7pm today. Remember I was on the phone with them at 10:30pm last evening. He said the tech would call me a few hours before arrival and give me an update if they were running late or if they were available earlier.
So today the guy called me around 3:30 and said he was on schedule for 5pm. When he arrived, he determined that fiber optic cable from the drop to my ONT has been severed. However he said, he was prepared to lay a temporary cable on along the curb to get us up and running tonight. After hooking up the cable, he determined that our ONT box was not working correctly and that may or may not have been related to the construction. So he replaced that, along with the battery backup inside. However since we were getting a new ONT he also needed to go up to the community hub and replace some hardware there to match the new ONT. Bt the time he got done he had been working outside in the sleet and dark for about 2-1/2 hrs. He was super nice and polite and not once did he complain about the conditions. So far pretty good service.
When he fired up the system we had phone, internet but no TV. This is where I was really impressed. I have bypassed the crappy FIOS router years ago for a better, more secure wifi router and just bridged the FIOS router to use the MOCA Coax connection for On Demand and Guide. When he saw this I was totally expecting him to say, oh well, it’s NOT the Verizon setup so you’ll have to let me reset the router back to factory settings. However after I explained what I had done, and that it’s worked this way for over 5 yrs, he was totally cool. He said, let me look for another source of the problem and if he couldn’t find anything then maybe he would have to reset the router to default and then I could redo my setup after he left, which would have been a total pain in the ass for me.
So he changed splitters, checked boxes, tested cables, which were all inside, spend another hr outside testing the video signal at the hub and the ONT and couldn’t find any problem. So I was sure he was going to reset my whole system. I asked if he had a stock router on the truck and if he would be willing to bypass my setup entirely and test the system this way. He said “Sure, that’s a good idea” came back with the stock router and sure enough everything except TV didn’t work. By this time he had been working here for 3 hrs, but still had a totally positive, professional and helpful demeanor. He went back outside in the rain and tested some more and after about 30 more min, just decided to replace the brand new ONT with another one on the truck. We had TV immediately. Then we reconnected my old setup and everything worked as it did before yesterday. He just left at 9pm.
I could knock Verizon for a lot of reasons, but this is the very first time I’ve had a tech out to our home since we subscribed over 15yrs ago and it was a first class customer service experience. Thank you Troy!
For those interested this is what my yard has looked like for the past 9 weeks.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk