Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Verizon Fios TV

Most of you know how annoying and frustrated I have been with the Fios TV service at my house and how I've told everyone to not even think of changing from Cox.

Tonight I wanted to watch Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News. I picked up the remote control to turn the TV on at 6:28 and finally got the picture at 6:48.

This was the straw that broke my sanity! I got on the phone (again) to the Verizon call center and asked for a name and mailing address to send a letter. What I got was an email address for some guy whose job is to answer complaints from Verizon customers (I couldn't imagine that job, probably far worse than what I did for Pulte Homes.)

Here's the gist of what I sent to him:

I agreed in September 2007 to a 2 year agreement to get a discounted price on Verizon TV, internet and telephone. I've found that whatever the price is that was discounted, it's not worth it! If I could get the TV service for FREE it still would not be worth it.

It's hard to put into words how much I dislike the Fios TV service in RI. I have called the call center more times than I can remember with questions and problems with the service. I have had 2 service techs here to fix the problems that I've had. The 1st technician was no help whatsoever as he had never even seen the TV service. The 2nd technician seemed to be knowledgeable, but still was not able to explain the problems that I have.

I hate the remote control. The often used buttons are not convenient, and having to press the STB button before pressing the POWER button is ridiculous. If anyone other than me is trying to watch TV it's almost laughable trying to get the TV and cable box on at the same time. I hate that the info banner is so big and the time it is shown on the TV cannot be shortened.

The two problems that annoy and tick me off beyond belief are the favorite button and not being able to skip channels. The favorite button goes to the guide and toggles between 2 channels with no discernible pattern. Not being able to skip channels is most annoying. I do not want to watch spanish, religion and shopping channels. There is NO way to skip them other than to block them with parental controls and then you still have to go through all the channels to surf.

I rarely watch live TV, I record almost everything I watch on the DVR because of the awful set up of Fios.

I'm ready to start a letter writing campaign against Fios TV and have told pretty much everyone I know to not even think of getting it, it's so awful to put up and live with.

I need to have this service updated, changed, removed, whatever before I lose my mind.


It should be interesting to see if this gets improved or resolved.

Stay tuned. If you can get the damn TV turned on, that is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I worked at the Fios Support Center in RI for over 2.5 years and literally handed in my id badge and quit in September. I was in the first video trained class in 2005 also. Feel free to email me at phybertek@gmail.com. I am going to finally say my peace online about my in my own blog at some point

michaelwma said...

Right here with you ... check my experience at
http://michaelwma.blogspot.com/2008/01/verizon-fi-no-os-running-commentary-in.html

I can't believe that I am waiting for this!

Anonymous said...

FIOS is not only worthless, it costs more than what Verizon advertised in their come-on letter. I have had nothing but major headaches with FIOS since we got it in October, 2007. If you want to know who to write, I suggest you bombard Mr. Ivan Seidenberg, President and CEO of Verizon at Verizon Communications, 140 West St., New York, New York 10036. While you will not a get a call from Mr. Seidenberg, you will get a call from an area manager and a call from their "Executive Customer Care Center"...what does that tell you?? They have so many complaints at the executive level that they have a department for it.
I feel sorry for their customer service employees that have to deal with the frustrations of the customers on a day-to-day basis, what a horrible job. My recommendation is to NOT get FIOS....ever.