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badgolferman

wrote:

Well we havent had verizon fios for 2 years, for voice and DSL, I
havent taken FIOS tv.

First a noisey router in their central office created bad noise on
some incoming calls, only took 6 weeks to get their network division
to finally fix it, after calling every day for a month and some heated
arguments with CSRs who claimed all was fine, must be my inside wiring
after verizon techs on site here reproduced the problem and noted in
the account it was NOT my inside wiring.

Today a new problem, whats that alarm tone? beeps very few minutes,
kinda like a smoke alarm

turns out to be the DSL box in the basement, has red battery failure
light up

called verizon obviously rebooting my computer, and all the rest the
automated system tries to make me try isnt going to fix this one.

entered my phone number like 4 times, finally got a rep who is sending
out a new battery if they arent on strike tomorrow

but he wonders if there was a power surge? sounded like he expects the
battery isnt going to fix it, and frankly i am too busy to wait around
for a tech. although all my experiences with them have proved to be
nice. the office people have a sucky attitude.

I asked how to turn off the alarm, sadly the only way to do that is
power everything off, shutting off my phone entirely

geez why didnt they put a alarm silence button somewhere? the noise is
annoying........

and if they go on strike it will be there forever..........

next stop see if I can get the battery pack apart, and replace the
cells, its really annoying

My old DSL worked fine sorry I EVER heard of FIOS, keep your copper
its more reliable

I was a Verizon FiOS Network Technician up to 2 months ago when I left
the company. I was the guy who would fix network related problems or
the one who CSAs would pass along a trouble ticket to when they
couldn't fix your problem with the tools they had at their disposal.
They really don't have much to work with and are on a 12.5 minute call
average time limit. Unfortunately they will do whatever necessary to
get the customer off the phone in order to maintain their call times,
otherwise it affects their evaluations. That is the nature of the
beast at Verizon call centers and is one reason I didn't want to be
there anymore.

The FiOS TV & Internet service is truly superior to what the
competitors offer at this time. The unlimited bandwidth available to
the customer's house allows Internet speeds up to 50M up and down at
this time and easily can be upgraded soon. Several markets are
offering those speeds currently. The TV service has more HD channels
than DirectTV or will soon. The telephone service is the one weak spot
and that is when comparing to traditional copper lines that go back to
the Central Office. Even cable companies have batteries around the
neighborhood to provide backup power to your cable phone service, I
experienced this problem when we had a hurricane 5 years ago and lost
everything.

The FiOS service is passive and broadcast all the way to the house and
the Optical Network Terminal attached to your house is a little
computer that must be powered up to separate the three services from
the optical signal coming to you. When a power loss occurs the backup
battery is supposed to provide up to 8 hours of TELEPHONE backup time.
The TV and Internet service shut themselves off to save power for your
phone to operate in emergencies. It doesn't mean you can talk on it
for that period of time, just be able to send/receive calls. The
battery is a standard one you can buy at Radio Shack that is used for
RC cars I believe.

Verizon is replacing all copper lines with optical over the coming
years. If there is FiOS in your area you will be hard-pressed to order
copper phone service through them. It can be done but there are
special circumstances. The maintenance costs of the deteriorating
copper lines and batteries at the Central Office is tremendous and that
is what has driven the change to fiber.

Although I have Verizon Wireless phone service because of coverage and
the IN NETWORK service I am not sure I would get FiOS for myself. This
not because of the technology or reliability but because of the
corporate culture that I experienced. Passing the buck and
maltreatment of employees, not to mention how customers get treated
because of internal processes makes Verizon one company I want to
avoid. Keep in mind though I worked in a place where all I saw were
customer problems, and they were the worst problems. Many people are
perfectly satisfied and have never experienced anything to complain
about.

I guess my point is FiOS is here to stay. It is in the growing stage
at this point and technical problems will be ironed out. The biggest
drawback to FiOS is the juggernaut of Verizon's culture and antiquated
internal systems that make efficiency a dirty word.