Whenever I signed up, I made it crystal clear to them that there was no land line and that I needed a dry loop. DTV said there was no problem and set it up. Once I didn’t get the DSL service on the expected date, I called Verizon because we had their equipment set up and ready to go but no service although I had got an automated call on my cell phone stating that billing would begin for DSL on June 20th. I’m not about to pay for something i’m not able to access.

REALLY long story short, I spent more than 8 hours total on the phone with these people beginning on Friday June 20th through Tuesday June 24th attempting to get this mess straightened out. Some people were nice and generally trying to be helpful but MOST of them were very unhelpful and just transferred the call whenever I asked for clarification on why they were saying at this point that I couldn’t get service after they had already assigned me a dry loop number–I’d just get transferred several times to another person who would then say everything was well and they would send someone out on monday. They never sent anyone so I called back again asking why and at this point attempting to get them to not bill me for it. Come to find out, I had placed the first initial call to them from my work phone. They had STUPIDLY set up their DSL service for that number which is a land line! I didn’t even GIVE them that number for anything, just on their caller ID from where I called.

Finally, last night after spending more than 2 hours on the phone with these incredibly stupid people I told one of their supervisors that I wanted to speak with a manager. The person I was talking to insisted on transferring me to yet another department for exactly the 8th time during the course of my phone call and just cut me off. I wasn’t too pleased with it so I just canceled the service. They wanted to know why I had chosen to cancel it after such a short time so I told them. They were wasting way too much of my time and if I did ever get their service working, heaven forbid I should have any sort of problem with it and have to call them about it. I’d spend a really long time getting it worked out!

DONT GET VERIZON! THEY SUCK!

Imagine my shock ( I know, you are all laughing, justifiably! ) when I finally got someone to place an order to cancel my land line, and then found out once they do that, which they can do very quickly (almost instantaneously, but they can’t turn anything ON that quickly), that I also have to lose my existing DSL and order the dry loop, which no one can tell me what the cost will be!

WHAT THE HECK! And we are PAYING them for this service? Come on, there must be something we can do? Any ideas, other than cancelling all electronic service?

HELP!
Yep, we are in this together!

Bev

Also when Verizon bought GTE they sold my formerly closed account to an out of state credit collection agency. This was an already paid bill that I had gotten behind on but paid ten years before when I changed to Pacific Bell (now AT &T.) But after ten years I had alredy lost track of the cancelled check or bank statement for the payment and my bank no longer had proof after that amount of time. I looked up on the internet and found out it is illegal to collect on accounts after that amount of time in California so companies get around it by selling the account to an out of state collector. I could have fought the issue but didn’t want to wreck my credit while I untangled the mess being in the process of trying to obtain a mortgage loan, so I paid the swindlers the $250 I already paid. And trust me, this time -I paid with a cashiers check and kept the receipt.

Needless to say I don’t like Verizon.

I have been a costumer of Verizon Landline and DSL for years..however Verizon’s land line fees where getting way to expensive - for a phone used way to infrequently. So I switched to Vonage with the understanding that I would need a DSL line - Verizon or otherwise. I shopped around and I responded to an Verizon On-line offer for a DRY LOOP service for 24.99. for one year. Which I applied to on line. I received a confirmation of my order.

Mind you the transfer of my Verizon number to Vonage went smoothly and my Verizon DSL continued to work. Weeks go by and I get a email from Verizon saying that Dry Loop service is not available in my area. So now instead of thinking I have a 24.99 one year commitment for a dry loop service - I’m told it will cost double that..? Why ? What the heck am I using now but a dry loop service? So how can you tell me it doesn’t exist in my area?

Try to call and speak to someone .. that’s a joke..countless attempts to call - to no avail..you simply can not get through to anyone - or if you do - they can’t help you. One rep after an hour and a half of attempts to get anyone - tells me that because I don’t have my phone with Verizon anymore they have to charge me more for a dry loop service - 49.99. I said I understand I signed on for a DRY LOOP but the offer was for 24.99 - not 49.99 why isn’t that being honored? She couldn’t answer and just hung up on me.

There needs to be some serious unaccountably & investigation into these companies practices. Some authority or legal action or consumer revolt is sorely needed. I just don’t know where to go…or how to start it.

We finally got dsl up and running with our land line which was through IDT, though the dsl service was Verizon. This took almost a year as the external modem had issues, bad cables and a poor connection. Constant freezing of my computer occurred as well. Finally talking with a supervisor and threatening to go to a cable line, I was offered two months free as well for my troubles. (which ended up being only one by the time it started working.)

After 6 months of use, we saw an ad to get the Vonage phone system which worked “directly through your dsl” line. This gave us phone options for much cheaper than IDT, so we signed up. (bad decision)

Our land line was disconnected as soon as we signed up, and we then lost our dsl connection as well. Calling the “computer technitions” for hours until a person could be contatcted, and retelling the story at least a hundred times,(all pointing the finger at each company… IDTs fault… Vonage’s fault.. Verizons fault…) as well as racking up hundreds of dollars on my cell phone b/c my land line was cut… no one could helpt it seemed. Enter the dry loop number.

I was told by Verizon that I needed to get a dry loop service because the land line, now, didnt exist. We were charged for a disconnection fee, and a service charge for switching service lines, and then the cost of dry loop installation fees, which cancelled any “credit” I was offered by Verizon.

No where on any brochure or website..(which we also lost due to the cutting of our land line) did it say we needed to contact our land line operator/service to make sure this didnt happen. Every tech person, just like your scenario, laughed at the people before and stated “I was in the wrong department”. The worst part is that after waiting w/o phone service or internet… I tried to take care of the problems myself. By calling different operators and tech support people, my dry loop service was set up and cancelled and set up again..by different operators (more charges)

The date of my final setup ended up being 3 weeks after my line was cut, all w/o phone service and no possible contact with my family except my cell phone which was maxed out by this time.

Compensation was stated, then ignored and I ended up being charged for the termination fees and reconnection fees, and new service fees, and a dry loop service that worked quite poorly.

I feel your pain. Forget trying to get help from tech support, as their help will only drive you crazy. Repeat the problem to 20 different people before someone will attempt to help… This from the Verizon monopoly that gives the customer no choice but to use them for connection: beware to anyone else looking for dry loop… and do your homework before you sign up!!!

Called verizon asking for dry loop as advised by a friend. No problem, they signed me up. 2 speeds available 1.5meg and 3.0, priced $29.95 and $39.95 respectively. I chose 3.0 with the first 3 months being 19.95 a month as a promo. Equip took a week longer to arrive than told, hooked it up and line did not work. Technician came 3 days later(earliest avail date) hooked up line and told me i was only running 1.5 meg speed and to call and make sure i was not being overcharged.

The next day I received a bill charging me for my new phone line! The best part was the charges were by-the-minute and the charges were all from before I even had the dsl hooked up! I called and they removed the charges after some explaining. They say the person who signed me up accidentally entered the order as dsl and phone service.

Now here is where I may be partially to blame because I took the action which caused the problem. The dsl service itself works fine. After activating the account i get a verizon notice saying i am eligible to try their antivirus software (”pc checkup”) for free as a trial. Not knowing any better and with no warning notice from them, I downloaded and installed it. As soon as I did that my computer began to constantly freeze , internet explorer was barely functional, I could no longer open “my computer” or “my documents” and a few other problems.

I called verizon tech service and after 3 tries found someone who even knew they offered “pc checkup” everyone else tried to tell me I was an idiot and downloaded some 3rd party scam virus. This last tech hooked up to my computer and insisted on reinstalling the program which i had uninstalled as soon as I noticed the problem(which didnt fix it by the way). He then gave up and gave me dell’s tech service #.

Dell told me there was no other option but to backup all of my files and reinstall the entire operating system! I was furious and had to purchase an external hard drive to copy everything to. I understand that I should have known not to have installed additional antivirus software but if it was going to cause a problem this massive there could have at least been a little popup warning!

Anyway, 3 days later , i have it all backed up and dell helps me to reinstall windows and everything. I decide to call verizon and politely explain my problem and see if they will compensate me for any or all of my troubles. After a half hour reexplaining my problem to 3 different people i am transferred to the “supervisor” who apologizes for my inconvenience but is very clear that it was my own fault in downloading the software and that they were not liable. I further went on to tell him all my problems mentioned above and he looks it up and tells me that there are actually 3 available speeds. 786, 1.5 meg, and 3.0meg . The first priced at 29 and the last 2 at 39 based on availability. He also mentioned that i was not eligible for the 19.95 promo as a dsl customer and took it off my account. He told me if i wanted to upgrade to 3.0 it was not more expensive but i would have to call tech support. For my troubles I was offered 2 months free service which i eventually accepted. As for the price discrepancies he told me rather bluntly to take it or leave it.

The next day I called tech support to up it to 3.0 since it was the same price as the speed i was already getting and the girl laughed at me for calling them. She asked around the tech support office and told me that anyone in the company knows that tech support does not handle that kind of account change. I was told that either the “supervisor” was an idiot or he was just trying to get me off the phone.

And to end my story I received an automated call from verizon today telling me my speed was upped and that the bill may or may not go up. I’m scared to even check if the price has changed for fear of getting more bad news. I can’t stand another phone call of people telling me “the last guy was wrong, deal with it” because i dont know who to believe.I am so sick of this company but I need internet access and this is absolutely my only option in my particular case. So my advice is, if you choose verizon dsl make sure you keep an eye on everything they do (because they will screw it up) and prepare to be horribly frustrated for several weeks at least.

The modem arrives ready to be installed with a Phone Line, Ethernet cable or DSL cable. No a/c coaxial cable output or input on the modem. I call them and have to go through their call center in the Philippines, where the guy reading from the script tells me that that I need to go buy a longer cable to run down the hallway to the only phone line in the house to make it work. I tell them that is not an option and I refuse to buy another cable to run 30ft down the hall to make their service work for which I was mislead when there is a a/c jack 2 feet from my computer. I informed them their options are send a technician to install a dry loop connection or phone jack or lose a customer to Comcast.

They said they would send a technician after 30min of them trying to sort out this mess. Telling me the technician would call within 24-48 hours and schedule a time to install this jack. The day arrives and no phone call to schedule only a phone call saying the “repair was done” I didn’t ask for a repair!!

I called the technician back and he tells me that they can’t install lines in an apartment. And tries to tell me that I need to buy a wireless router and modem to connect to my jack and just go wireless. I let him drone on about all the different ways I could connect to the internet by buying an additional piece of equipment. The apartment complex doesn’t seem to mind installing of jacks and what really pisses me off is that when you call their “technicians” They answer like they are own their own time. “Yeah” (silence) me-“hello I’m looking for Ken the technician?” “Oh this is Ken” INTRODUCE YOURSELF!!!! Let me know that I’m talking to a person with a brain not a wrong number.

After hearing every excuse why they can’t do this or that I hung up and then cancelled my service. It seems to me that companies don’t want to do anything in the customer service department because that costs them money! So they have every way out of doing something to help you.

This is from someone who is a graduate of Business and Information Systems and Accounting and has worked in an industry where I have built cables, and in construction where I have ran lines power and phone and stereo, and every other kind of line. Customer service for many companies is their last priority. Verizon seems to be one of those companies.