[Coco] Color LOGO

[Lothan]

From: "Gene Heskett" <gene.heskett at verizon.net>
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 12:17 AM
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Subject: Re: [Coco] Color LOGO

> And right now I don't know what the bandwidth is, my phone line dropped 
> out
> Wednesday about noon and the only reason I called verizon is because the
> Public Service Commission here requires the name of the contact person you
> talked to at vz when you called in the trouble report.
>
> I did this 3 weeks ago when the line died the last time, and when I 
> called,
> the D...head in India wouldn't put me through to repair service until he 
> had
> completed his own version of the Census form.  That outage was from about
> 4ish Friday to about 8pm-ish Sunday.  They first said it would be fixed
> before 5pm the next Wednesday!  Needless to say I went ballistic & they
> finally came back and said sometime Saturday, but Saturday came and went, 
> as
> did most of Sunday.
>
> But when they 'fixed' it, my bandwidth dropped to about 35k/sec & I'm 
> paying
> for 180k/sec.  So I sent them another message via the web page this past
> Monday after putting up with it for a couple of weeks.  It went up to 
> about
> 140k/sec the next day, Tuesday & then the phone, on that same copper, died
> around noon the next day.  So I filed with the PSC. late Wednesday 
> evening.
> I have a neighbor that has had so much trouble he just calls the PSC on 
> his
> cell phone.  Got an email from the PSC acking my complaint Thursday 
> morning,
> & vz has the gall to ask my why I filed with the PSC when they deign to
> calling my cell phone about 4 this afternoon.  Without calling anybody 
> names
> or questioning their family tree (and boy was that testing my patience), I
> told them exactly what I thought was going on & what it would take to fix
> it.  Then she tried to put me off till next Monday afternoon & I went
> ballistic again.  She went off to check, and they are supposed to have
> someone in town tomorrow, seems somebody stole a few hundred feet of 
> copper
> that was in use from another place so they had to be here anyway.  A 
> likely
> story IMO.

Sounds a lot like AT&T in my opinion. Before I moved back I called AT&T to 
have them install a second line in the house and to set up phone and DSL 
service. When the service day finally arrived, the tech claimed he had a 
ticket to install the line but he did not have a ticket to terminate the 
line into the box or to activate service. I immediately called AT&T to 
complain and they claimed the line would be terminated and activated the 
next day. Three or four days went by before anyone bothered to show up to 
terminate the line. When the tech finally showed up, she claimed the line 
would be activated at 6:00 PM. Why they have this craptastic schedule is 
beyond me. Anyway, 6:00 PM rolls around and the line is still dead. I call 
AT&T and they say the line will be activated at 6:00 PM the next day. I 
politely explain that I have a confirmation letter in my hand saying the 
line would be activated a week ago. It just falls on deaf ears. Needless to 
say, this goes on for three or four more days with the same line of lies 
from AT&T -- the line will be activated at 6:00 PM the next day. I finally 
scream that unless this phone and DSL service is activated within the next 
hour, I am cancelling the order, refusing to pay for anything, and 
contacting my attorney for breach of contract. I had to go through hell with 
managers, but in the end I finally discovered that customer service accepted 
the order but failed to complete the order with internet services or with 
accounts payable. In other words, if I hadn't screamed, I would never have 
service activated.

I finally get the line activated roughly week and a half after the contract 
date and then they billed me three times for the same service on the same 
statement. It took four months just to straighten out the billing mess they 
created and they keep sneaking monthly subscription fees to their lame 
anti-virus software into my statement so I have to keep calling to get it 
refunded.

To top it off, they insist on selling (and reselling and reselling) these 
cheap Motorola 2210 DSL modems for something like $119. Look it up on Google 
and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone saying anything good about this 
cheap box. It runs so hot it never lasts more than six months to a year in 
this humid climate, the firmware is so horrible it often can't renegotiate a 
PPoE connection, and I'm not sure whether the firmware is just ridiculously 
slow or it's throttling the connection (although I suspect it's just really 
slow). Some I've replaced with Actiontec DSL modems (significantly better 
DSL modem for about $40) and the others I've put in bridge mode with the 
router handling the PPoE connection.

I'm not saying Verizon is significantly better, but I have never experienced 
this level of incompetence from Verizon. And I do mean literally that since 
SBC acquired AT&T, AT&T has been utterly incompetent. If I had an 
alternative in this area, I would drop AT&T like a hot potato.

> This is what you get when the phone company has a franchise and locally
> nearly zero competition. Yeah cable is here, and nearly 2x the money.
>
> What we need today are free markets.

I completely agree this is exactly what we need, but it is not going to 
happen in the near future.