Hey Verizon! What Happened To Customer Service?

I haven’t written a good rant in a while, so I thought since I had nothing better to write I would vent my current frustrations with the Internet Service provider that my parent company uses for one of their construction trailers in Los Angeles. Hell, I want to vent my frustrations with ISP’s in general! I have had plenty of problems with various ISP’s in the past, and I am sure you have too.

I have a thing for customer service. If you have been following the blog for a while, you know that I hate Acer computers because of their lousy customer service. I hate them so much, I wrote a rant about them that went to the front page of Digg.com! That kind of negative publicity cannot be good for business. I believe that if your customer has a problem, you need to make it right. Period! I have been doing customer service in one way or another since high school. I know how important it is. If you don’t treat your customers right, they soon will not be your customers.

My latest frustrations are with Verizon Business. They are supposed to be providing a simple T1 connection for our construction trailer. The problem is that we are paying for 1.5Mbps upload and download speed. We are getting 1.5Mbps upload, but only 256kbps download. WTF? No problem, just open a ticket with support right? Welcome to runaround central! Opening a ticket is easy, getting them to actually do something is not. We have had 6 open tickets with them, each one their technicians said, “The line tested fine, check your equipment” and closed the ticket. Wonderful!

I drove my happy ass up to LA from San Diego to check my equipment. I completely bypassed my networking gear, and plugged a laptop directly into their router using a static IP. Same results! 256kbps download speed! I called them back to let them know. They ran some tests, monitored the circuit for 24 hours, and closed the ticket. Still no resolution. I contacted their level 3, 4 and 5 management teams to complain, and that did absolutely no good. I called our account rep, and he could care less! He already had our money, why give a shit right?

This has been an ongoing issue for about two months when we got the T1 installed. We have begun searching for another provider. Possibly AT&T or Covad Wireless. We’ll see how it goes.

Like I said before, this isn’t really anything new with ISP’s. I used to have Earthlink DSL at my old apartment. Their service would stop working about every two months. It was always a hardware problem with SBC’s lines, the trouble was getting Earthlink to contact SBC on my behalf. That is always an issue isn’t it though? The problem I always seem to run into is that ISP’s NEVER want to have to open a ticket with the local loop. Do you want to know why I think that is? Because they get the same runaround they give us! I know it sucks! Friggin’ call them already! Roll a friggin’ truck!

The absolute worst ISP I have ever had to deal with though has got to be Deltacom on the East coast. We used them for two of our offices at my last company, and they were horrendous! You could call their support number, but you would never speak to an actual tech, only some dumb receptionist. If you asked to speak with a manager, or a tech they would put you on indefinite hold, or insist that they have someone call you back. Of course nobody ever would. My last company finally broke their contract with Deltacom due to poor SLA, and are much happier.

I cannot be the only one who has dealt with crappy Internet Providers. I want to know your horror stories! Come on and vent with me in the comments!

Technorati Tags: rant,verison business,earthlink dsl,deltacom,isp,internet,provider,customer service.