Technology - excellent, but can use some improvement. Customer service - there is none.
Written: Dec 10 '07
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We will not go back to cable (or rabbit ears). Our household subscribed to FiOS Internet service approximately 18 months ago and added the phone and television services 4 months ago. There are 2 aspects to the service - the technology and the customer service. Our satisfaction with each is at a different end of the spectrum.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
It is fairly simple - there is none. When calling to subscribe to the service, you will very likely encounter very pleasant individuals who value your time and business. It essentially ends there. The installers (at least in my New England community) are contractors with license rights to the Verizon name (hence the Verizon trucks). I actually requested that one leave my home due to his inappropriate demeanor. When you call with any complaints concerning your service or the bill, expect to set aside at least an hour for waiting on hold and then some time to escalate the matter to a supervisor. The good news, is that once we've reached the supervisor level, the problem tended to be resolved to our satisfaction.
TECHNOLOGY
The Internet service is everything it's advertised to be - fast and reliable. We easily transmit large files over 8MB in size and use the service to work from home via VPN connections. We have rarely been unable to access the Internet (maybe 4 times in the past 18 months). The "box" has battery back-up making it possible to access the Internet during power outages and the router was included in our subscription at no additional charge. (At the time of this review, it is unknown whether this promotion is still in effect.)
The television service provides an excellent picture and an expansive channel selection (for those televisions that have a box). Televisions without a box will only receive the local channels. Note that local access channels may not be available. We did not confirm that our town programming was available and discovered after the service was installed. I believe that such services are subject to the town's contract with Verizon and subscribers should contact their town offices to request that such programming be made available. The only other "negative" concerning the television service is the menu is rather slow and difficult to navigate. Verizon recently switched to a new format intended to be more user friendly. This new format displays the menu either as a virtual full screen or vertical half screen - in either case, the current programming is reduced to a small viewing window. Selecting items from the menu is subject to a number of pauses that slow the process and video-on-demand loading is just as tedious.
The phone service is a bundled service, including call waiting, voicemail and long distance. The voice quality is identical to the traditional copper-wire service EXCEPT for local calls. This may be an anomaly in our particular calling area, but we have noticed an echo to calls placed within our town limits. We are currently working with Verizon to address this issue, as the quality is so poor that we use cell phones for such calls. We have not experienced this problem with any other calls and once this problem is resolved, we will have no complaints concerning the phone service.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
noisycricket
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Location: Boston, MA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 1 member
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