Verizon and its absolutely crappy customer service

I really haven’t seen anything as bad as Verizon’s customer service. This blog post is not lessen my frustration, but just to get back at them, I’ll make sure that none of my readers ever take a Verizon connection ever.

Now, there’s this theory, that for every internet provider, or wireless provider, there’s at least some person who thinks that they’re the worst company in the world. For Verizon, I’m one such person.

Here’s my story.

First around January 13th, I applied online for an internet connection with Verizon. Well, that connection never came (some credit issue? But they could’ve mailed me that something was wrong.) This was my first experience with Verizon customer service. Here’s how it works: you call up their number, they keep wasting your time asking lots of questions, and trying to avoid having to get a customer service rep speak to you (“you want to speak to an agent, but it may be faster to solve your problem here.. followed by the menu repeated“). After that, when you final press 0 a couple of times to keep confirming that “Yes, Dammit I do want to speak to a real person”, you’re told that they’re currently experiencing lots of load and it maybe a while before I can get to an agent. And they thank me for my patience.

And it is quite a frikking while. And after that quite a frikking while, I am also sometimes (right now) told that their offices for my location are closed. (9.30am.)

Couple of other times, when you do get them, they do everything possible to transfer you to somebody else (“New york region”, “tech support”).

Anyway, so the first connection that I applied for on January 13th never got connected, and eventually I had to apply for a new connection over the phone around Feb 8th or so. This was the only pleasant conversation I had with their agents, but mind you … be ready to talk for an hour on the phone for this.

Also, they take your credit card number for automatic payments.

So then, a week later I get my equipment. But my internet doesn’t work.

So now begins this whole drama of me calling them up, them saying that they’ll send a technician who never shows up. (I instead get a phone call on the morning of the visit when I stay at home just waiting for him, saying that my “problem has been resolved.” Really?)

Eventually they tell me that they need to downgrade my connection speed to 3mbps, from the already not impressive 7mbps.

So then I walked into a Time Warner office, and got a blazing fast connection that weekend.

The Verizon drama wasn’t over. I still had to disconnect my service. They had already billed me for the first month, directly on my credit card. No notification mail of any sort.

Most of these companies have a 30 day return policy. So when I eventually got hold of a customer service rep to cancel my account, I was told that I can return the equipment and I’ll be refunded for the first 30 days since the internet never worked for me. Oh wow, I say to myself.

That never happened.

Instead I just got billed for a second month. (This despite having a confirmation mail from them that my service has been disconnected.)

I’m getting quite sick of the seeming pleasant automated woman asking me to say “Billing or payment, or press 1, say Tech support, or press 2….” I’m down over 200$ here already.

I usually avoid caps lock, this time I will use it: NEVER TAKE A VERIZON CONNECTION! YOU CAN CHECKOUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE, BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE!