Have you ever been on the phone with a Customer Service Rep for so long and you are still not getting your issue taken care of and you lose your temper and begin speaking out of character due to frustration? This is how I felt the other day on the phone with Verizon DSL Customer Service February 1, 2008. My mother has had Verizon DSL for over a year and a half and all of a sudden on January 15, 2008 her service all of a sudden stopped working. She initially called Verizon and they basically told her that there was something that she did wrong that caused the service to no longer work properly. After the second time speaking with the Verizon CS, I told my mom that I would come by and check to see what the issue was with her service. I went through all of the steps that the installation cd which was provided by Verizon to basically figure out that the issue was the modem. So I called the customer service number on January 20 to talk to someone about the issue with the DSL service. After going through all of the automated operators I was finally patched to an operator that stated that the issue ticket that my mother had opened had been closed because they thought that her service was running. When I stated that the service was not up they proceeded to walk me through all of the steps that the CD took me through previously. I played along and after 1 hour still no service. I told the CS rep that I think it is the modem. Their response it could not be the modem maybe it was something that your mom downloaded. So next I was asked to disconnect the computer from the modem to run a line test to the modem that failed as well. The CS rep then finally comes up with the bright idea that they will send someone out to the house and check the service in the house the next day between the hours of 9 am and 7 pm and someone had to be there or they would not even try and fix the problem. After my mom waited all day for someone to show up the Technician called at 6:30 pm and said that the outside line was working and that they was not coming out to the house. Of course the service was still not working. My mother did tell me until a week later. The next time I called I was a little irritated so I think I may have said some things that I cannot post in this blog but they ended up sending my mother another modem so we will start this entire process over again once the modem comes in.
I decided to try and look on Verizons' website to see if they had any blogs pertaining to their DSL issues and ask I scrolled through their blogs they all were more like marketing ploys about new releases or stating how great their service is. After reading "The Corporate Weblog Manifesto" located in Naked Conversations, I was able to see what Verizons purpose for blogging was and that was to market their products. In the book Naked Conversations a true corporate blog site will post good and bad things about their products. Does Verizon really care about their customers? I did a little more searching on the internet to see if there were any other complaints about the DSL issue and found a site complaints.com that had some feedback on how to deal with the DSL issues. There is a posting in the complaints.com DSL issues from a Verizon employee that says when you speak with an operator you should immediately escalate your call to their manager you have a better chance of your issues being resolved. I am not a big fan of Comcast Cable but I dont have the issues that my mom has had with Verizon. WHY are the customers always getting the short end of the stick? How can we level out the playing ground without having the march on Congress steps? Listen and tell me what you think can be done to make this process better for the customer.
Comic from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/jmo20241.jpg
Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble/Shel Israel
YouTube Video from: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2853658307743442928
