This week I experienced the next generation of “customer service” – or should I say, dis-service. My first full Verizon phone/DSL bill came it a couple weeks ago and they had charged me full rate for the DSL rather than the special bundled deal I signed up for. So I called to get it corrected. I explained; “I work from home so I need the premiums DSL with 3 megabit down and 768 kilobit up”. “Yes, we can do that”, was the reply, “It’s $14.99 per month”. I thought “WOW” and “too good to be true”. “Let me confirm, this is the faster tier service with 768K upload speed – right?”. “Yes”. “Ok”. “We’ll make the change right away”.

Well, since I already had the fast service, I assumed all they would do if correct my bill. NOT!. About 10 days later, this past Monday to to be exact, my network went the way of the garden snail.

First thing Tuesday morning … well, 8AM Eastern since that is when their phone lines open … (isn’t this the phone company ?!) I call to find out “wazzup“.

I am told, they have signed me up for the “better than dial-up” service. “It gives you 768 kilobit down and 128 kilobit up”. I said, “WHAT?!” This is my lively-hood you’ve just “upgraded” ! To make things worse, we all know you never get the advertised speed. The 3M/768K was served me pretty well as I have predictable gotten 1.2M/700K. Now, if you extrapolate that the “better than dial-up” you get this ….

I don’t know about your Internet use, but imagine receiving about 20MB worth of mail each day, uploaded another 12MB of presentations. and then getting hit with 140MB of “patches” and “updates” to you computer. Over the course of a week, odds are good I will need to download a 500MB+ install of new software for testing; attend 5-10 web conferences, use VoIP, and run 2 or 3 instant messaging clients. At night, I run a bittorrent to get Linux builds and VM images that can easily be 4-5GB. This is not the domain of 148Kbit download !

Verizon tells me it will be fixed by Thursday night (I guess all service changes happen after hours). I have my fingers crossed. <all of them>

Update:? It’s Friday morning and my DSL speed has not improved. So, I called again at 8AM. At first, Verizon said the work ticket had been completed. Later, a different person said the ticket is now “pending” and “it may take up to 24 hours to register”. She followed that a bit later with “I have submitted a trouble ticket to ‘check into this’. It may take up to 3 business days to get a response.” So, it looks like it will be NEXT Thursday before I know if I need to rant again. <ugh>