The Bushrod Chronicles

not a good start

so we’ve had internet service through the cable company for a while now… had dsl before but switched to cable as part of a promo with cable tv…

‘s been fine… no problems… but its kinda expensive… and we now have direct tv instead of cable…

so we decided to jump back to dsl… this time with verizon, who our phone line is with… supposedly its good and by my figurin’ its gonna save us about 270 bucks over the next year…

so i order online on tuesday… get flooded with emails thanking me and giving me updates about how the work’s going to get us ready for dsl… including one that says our go-live date will be the next tuesday the 23rd…

so yesterday was the 19th… the box o’ hardware arrives… as does an email that says… and i quote…

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“Congratulations and welcome to Verizon Online DSL!

Your Verizon Online DSL service is ready on telephone line ***-***-****.

If you ordered a Verizon Online Self-Install Kit and have not received it, please call us right away at 1-800-567-6789. If you are installing the service yourself, you can start now by inserting the Install CD found in your Self-Install Kit and following the step-by-step instructions.

Don’t wait another minute! Set up your DSL service today and make this the last day you have to use dial-up. You’ll be exploring more, downloading more and achieving more online with your new DSL connection.

When you’re up and running, be sure to check out Broadband Beat at http://broadbandbeat.verizon.net for movie trailers, games, music and other cool things you can do with broadband.

Have questions? The fastest and easiest way to find answers to your DSL questions is to go online at http://www.verizon.net/help. Or, call us at 1-800-567-6789.

Thank you for choosing Verizon Online as your DSL service provider. Your business is important to us. “
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… my emphasis of course…

well i’m friggin impressed… they got the service turned on 4 days early… shipped the hardware to me fast… life is good…

impressed, that is, until i try to install everything and it keeps hanging up on the final account setup screen… seems to be seeing the modem… seems to be connecting to something somewhere and trading data… but no love on the final phase of setup…

so i make the dreaded call(s)… two times through the phone tree to figure out where i need to be… another call during which i was hung up on whilst in queue… and on lucky call number four, after being told the wait time would be less than ten minutes, a mere twenty minutes later i had the privilege of speaking with jeremy…

jeremy punched up our number and promptly told me, with a little chuckle and a tinge of yer-an-idiot-mister-customer tone, that our service was set to be active on the 23rd… yes jeremy… i’m fully aware that was the plan but it seems like you guys are so great that you did better than you thought and got it ready today as is, in my eyes, rather explicitly detailed in this email y’all sent me just a couple of hours ago…

hmmnn… that stumped him… after flailing about for a minute or two with no results in the way of getting our service to work he decided that the email was sent in error… and if we try to install everything on tuesday it’ll all probably work out just fine…

well… it better…

i’ll reserve judgement on the email-was-sent-out-too-early hypothesis until then…

i’ll go ahead and weigh in on the whole customer service aspect of the experience though…

jeremy… you’re a tech service guy whose job it is to troubleshoot problems and help the customers of your company… you are verizon to everyone that calls in needing help… i’m huge on customer service… as corny as it sounds it’s pretty much a passion with me… and you my friend certainly hosed the opportunity to make this into a positive experience for me… no apology… no empathy… jeez… if you don’t like what you’re doing go do something else… you’d be doing yourself a favor… and probably a whole bunch of other folks too…

… to be continued…

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