Thursday, February 14, 2013

Why a lot of people think that Verizon sucks, especially along Avenue C

The WNYC News Blog has a post on how some residents and business owners in the East Village — particularly along Avenue C — have quit Verizon after extended phone and Internet outages dating back to Sandy. Many businesses were unable to process credit-card orders, and have lost business in the process.

Among those business along (or near!) Avenue C that made the switch to other providers, such as Time Warner and Clear: Bobwhite Lunch Supper Counter, Alphabet City Wine Co., Barnyard Cheese Shop and Brix Wine Shop.

Verizon "wouldn't say how many people and businesses are still without service and couldn't fully explain the persistent outages and poor communications along Avenue C," according to the article.

Said a Verizon spokesperson: "There are certain instances where we have access issues, getting into certain buildings, but people and businesses should feel confident that we’re working 24-hours, around the clock, with not only building managers and property owners, but also within our own network to get this restored."

Read the whole article here.

Have you been affected (or maybe infected) by the Verizon outage?

[EVG file photo]

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Going through this now on 11th a couple of buildings down from Ave. C. Twice in the last month our DSL from Verizon has gone out, including last night. Got a phone message morning that the service is back up and running but no joy after restarting the modem, router, etc. I'm not a great lover of TWC, and I'm sympathetic to Verizon with Sandy basically bathing their wiring in a lovely mixture of dirty salt water, sewage, and gasoline, but if Verizon can't get it fixed I don't have time to wait around.

Anonymous said...

we live on 6th between B and C and after 14 years I had them disconnect my landline....still waiting for the promised "credit" they owe us for months of no service....

Anonymous said...

To add to the above: Verizon may be sending out "Your problem is fixed" as a way to delay customers' complaints and cancellations because you may not have time to call them back that day to tell that in fact it isn't fixed, giving them more time to actually make the repair. Additionally, you could be told that they can't fix your issue over the phone and will need to dispatch a tech to your location. That gives them another day or two (or more) to actually repair the problem on the street.

Gojira said...

At least two people in my building on 11th between A and B switched to Time Warner when Verizon told them in the days after Sandy that they would not get phone, TV and Internet back until mid-December. And access was never a problem.

Anonymous said...

I still haven't any landline service since Sandy; I'm on 7th St. off of B. I received credit and thank fuck I have a cell, but their excuses are getting tired, infrastructure blahblahblah.

I would cancel the landline too but I get a great deal calling the UK; now I have to use Skype for that :(

glamma said...

Yes. They are the worst. They TOTALLY f*cking suck.

What are the other service provers? I want to switch too!

Screw you Verizon! And your sh*tty customer service. More like customer TORTURE!

The worst!

TWO MONTHS NO SERVICE AND NO CREDIT

This happened for a month last year and they offered me FIVE DOLLARS which is STILL PENDING!

Just a joke.

~evilsugar25 said...

This is what I posted to the wnyc blog:


My landline has been out since the storm, Oct 29. They keep billing me, and then telling my my "service is suspended" for non-payment. When you can, occasionally, after repeated and determined trying, actually get a human on the phone, they tell you that you should "go ahead and pay and you'll get a refund when service is returned." yeah right!

They send you mailers that say they have alternative services to help you make phone calls over their cel network, and when you call the number to take them up on the offer, no one answers. Ever. I did get one guy, one time, on some number, who told me he'd "put in" for the alternative equipment, but it had to be approved, since I was outside some boundaries they had drawn downtown. (Despite the fact they confirm that my service is indeed out because of Sandy.) Apparently it wasn't approved, because I never got anything.

They are beyond incompetent, greedy, clueless, unresponsive and full of crap.

Thank god I have no other services from them.

Dave on 7th said...

Give up all hope! You will never get your landline back until Verizon finish's replacing all the old copper phone lines with fiber optic cables and your building gets rewired for fios.
They are apparently unwilling to tell customers that fact except in hushed tones from sympathetic repair men. But, beware when calling Time Warner to add a phone line. They will try to up sell you to their Signature service and if they can't then you may well end up in a Kafkaesque world of customer service run around that will you make admit to any crime just to make it stop.

Anonymous said...

I am on 7th off of B, as well. We have Verizon workers in our backyard nearly everyday working. They have been since Sandy. Their stuff got F'd up.

Anonymous said...

gotta go anonymous for this:

I was in a meeting a few years back with the head of marketing for verizon wireless, and the head of a major ad agency. I was an outside consultant.

The discussion literally centered on "How can we word this so we can screw the customer over and they won't realize that it says that we can do that?"

Later they read some verbage that was a "guaranty" for the customer - that didn't truly guaranty anything because it was gibberish. "That doesn't promise anything! Who approved that copy?" asked the verizon marketer. "I wrote it", said the head ad agency guy, "And you approved it".

VERIZON said...

@gotta go anonymous for this:

We installed video cameras and listening devices in your apartment before you even finished typing. Do not mess with us. We're Verizon.

Oh, and we have your cat.

blue glass said...

does anybody remember the movie "the president's analyst"? with james coburn.
great spy movie, comedy.
the phone company is involved.
rent it.

EV Grieve said...

@blue glass

Oh, yes! Good one... Haven't seen it in awhile...

Anonymous said...

After 3 months to the day of no service I gave up my business landline. 3 visits and I was told the CO or central office just had to re- direct my number to the new wires and 3 times they failed. I used my cell throughout tat time and will continue never going back to this company.

Anonymous said...

verizon is horrible...we had dsl internet with them in 2010, had to disconnect it cause it never worked, wasted like $250 which we never got credit for..and then there is the phone problem, every time it rains we lose dail tone and our phones go busy, after about 5-6 tries by verizon to fix it we were told by the last repair guy that we have to wait for the fios fiber optic lines to come in and replace the copper lines,,,gtfoh,,,we now have time warner on order to change us over - Lebrini's Pizzeria

pinhead said...

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
- Lily Tomlin, 1976

Jill W. said...

We installed wifiNY right around Dec 1 when Verizon missed their first promised deadline. This is for high speed internet, we had no landline already. Haven't looked back.

Lower East Side People's Credit Union has had their Ave C ATM out since Sandy, and Urban Vets has been affected too.

Anonymous said...

So in the begininning of February, my DH upgraded to a free phone, but somehow Fedex noted that super signed the package, but we never got the package. So we called Verizon (got the run arounds), they re-ordered the phone and 2 days ago, they emailed us the phone order has been cancelled. We contacted Verizon, it has been a month already and now they tell us, we should file a claim with Fedex, we called fedex today and they said Verizon should file a claim with them. So when I asked Verizon, what if Fedex will not reimburse us with the fee, then we (customer) will be liable for the upgrade fee. Now, we asked about terminating the service, they are going to charge us $55 for upgrade fee, etc.. and $350 termination fee. So now we are stuck with the old phone and a charge of $55. We cannot wait for the 2 years to be over so we can cancel this service. 3 hrs on the phone/online live chat could not get them to just issue us a new phone. Even managers cannot help. Verizon customer service used to be so much better, it has declined significantly. We have 2 separate plans, now i am considering to cancel my service with Verizon as well. Verizon's loss. Thank you Verizon for 15 great years.