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Monday, July 11, 2011

Hey, Verizon...Can You Hear Me Now?

It's official. I hate Verizon. Or maybe loathe is a better word. Detest? Hm.

Let me tell you a story.

About two weeks ago my Internet went out. It went out around 11 PM, right after a particularly loud and large thunderstorm. Kind of a normal thing to happen, right?

For me, not so much.

I call. I get told there's no problem with my Internet. I argue, I yell, I hang up, I call again, I yell some more, I get told there's no outage in my area, I yell a lot, I hang up again, I go to sleep, I wake up 2 hours later to put my son on the bus, and I call one more time. I finally get someone helpful and she tells me she'll call me back within the next 2 hours to let me know what's going on. She calls me back and guess what? I have an outage in my area. (Duh.) Wait, it gets better. The place that Verizon needs to go to fix this outage is contaminated by a chemical spill so the EPA has to come clean it up, and in about - oh say... 8 hours my Internet will be back up. I'm not even joking.

That was only the first bit of the story. (and yes, my Internet came back up) There's more, read on....................

So, about 5 days ago my Internet goes down. Again. And I was in the middle of playing World of Warcraft. Exactly. So...much to my (NOT) surprise - I call ye olde technical assistance department to see what the heck is going on and ask if there's a outage in my area.

First call: I get transferred to a department that is no longer in service.

Second call: After about 10 minutes on hold I finally get to speak to a human being. Well, i get to talk at a human being, I'm not so sure that he understands me all that well. Heck, I don't understand him all that well because I'm not well versed in that language of East Indian Accent. We go through all the usual measures - restart modem, reset modem, unplug cable, plug in cable, blah, blah, blah. Bear in mind I had to ask this guy to repeat everything at least twice.

Let me take a moment to point out that I'm not being racist. If you disagree, i don't really care. The fact is, if you can't speak understandable English, do not, I repeat - do not, get a job as a technical assistance representative. Don't. Go work in Billing and Collections, because nobody actually needs to understand you when you're asking them to give you money.

It got so bad, I hung up. I just....hung up on the guy. I couldn't take it anymore.

Call Three: I call back again, to be told by an automated voice that I could be better assisted by such and such a department. I get automatically transferred to a department that's closed. You heard me - closed.

Call Four: See Above.

Call Five: Please refer to Call Three, rinse and repeat for the next 4 calls.

Yeah, I'm just that stubborn.


Call Nine: I finally get through to an actual person that speaks passable English.

For a few blissfully ignorant moments I feel that my questions will be answered and I will resume the video game playing as soon as possible.

Then my little bubble is burst by only a few words. I'll relay my conversation here for you:

Verizon Guy : "I don't see any problem with your Internet connection, ma'am."

 Me: " if there's no problem with the Internet then howcome I can't access the..uh...Internet."

VG: "Did you reset your modem?"

Me: "Yup. And before you ask, I restarted it too. I also unplugged my cable, waited 30 seconds and plugged it back in. I've tried everything."

VG: "Did you unplug your cable?"

Me: "............yes."

VG: "Ok, we're going to go to the start menu, and find the search bar and type in C....M....D."

Me:"yeah, I already did that too."

VG: "Excuse me?"

Me: " I already tried to ping a website from the command prompt box. The response timed out."

VG: "Ok, you need to go to the start menu, find the  - '

Me: "Didn't you hear me? I just did that. I t doesn't work. My Internet is not working."

VG:  "Ok, let me put you on hold and I will run a line test to see if anything is wrong."

Me: "fine."


It doesn't get any better from there. At this point I have been on the phone for another 2 hours, trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with my service. I'm mad. I'm seething. I believe there may have been smoke coming out of my ears. I do not want to have to hang up and call back.

The guy finally gets back on the line and proceeds to tell me that his line test shows nothing wrong with my Internet connection. So, very slowly, in small words, I tell him that I can't connect to the Internet. Therefore, I do not have an Internet connection so his line test is obviously wrong. I proceed to tell him all about the incident a few weeks before, where I spent hours on the phone having everyone tell me my service was good - only to find out 8 hours later that their line tests were - in a nutshell - wrong. I may have been a little condescending, but at this point I just want someone to get their butts over to a computer and find out what the problem is. After a few minutes of this, he tells me he's going to send me to their "Expert Care Department."

You can imagine my surprise. I have never heard of such a thing, but I figure - what the hey? - I might as well try and see if any Experts really Care.


To Be Continued.......

1 comment:

  1. Can't believe I'm just now seeing this! I am SO glad you leave this stuff up! You NEED to be a writer! you NEED to write a book full of this stuff!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete

Be nice. Or I will find you and sic my pet zombie on you.