The Perfect Storm

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Over the past week or two I have gone through an interesting confluence of issues, all centered around communications.

1. My Comcast Triple Play is about to hit the one-year mark, which means that my rates are about to go way the hell up.

2. My company is deploying Cisco IP phones to all telecommuters. These phones require a VPN initiated at the router, so each of us was issued a Cisco 851 or the wireless equivalent.

3. Verizon is trying for a third time to finish pulling down their fibers so every unit in this building is finally ready for FIOS.

4. I just finished converting all of my home wiring to cat 6, and every device has access and is wired to Gigabit ethernet (not all can support it).

I had expected the Cisco router to be the biggest pain in the ass, but in reality it is a matter of education. I just don't know enough about it, and troubleshooting it takes time. What I had not expected was for my bailout from Comcast to Verizon to turn into a god damn comedy of horrors.

Yesterday, I decided that a company that treats its incoming customers as bad as Verizon does is not really a good way to spend my $150/month for telecommunications and cable TV. The solution is simple: cancel the order and move on.

The problem is that it is not just an issue of killing the order, I still need to deal with a rate increase from Comcast (who, by the way, have exceptional customer service for my area) which is going to leave me paying over $60/month for a VoIP service that is buggy and flaky. Also, *that* part of their customer support is not as good as for their TV and Internet sections.

My caller ID and voicemail work on and off, and opening tickets doesn't help much. I don't think I have lost the voice line once in the past year, but all of those ancillary services have been average at their best, and the web interface is just terrible.

Since I'll have a company issued phone, the VoIP line now reverts to personal use. I decided to switch it to Vonage, only to find out they are not able to transfer my number. No big loss there, I am sure that less than 15 people have that phone number so it should be easy to send them the new number. Vonage is $25/month (actually $30 after you add all of the regulatory taxes) for more features than Comcast's VoIP product, which in two weeks or so is going to cost me more than $60.

Even if my TV and Internet rates go a bit up, I'll still end up paying less by using Vonage.

The first thing that impressed me about the Vonage setup is that it allows for an automatic failover number. If your network goes down, it forwards your calls to whatever number you specify. This is a pretty sweet feature, assuming it actually works. The rest of the web management area is clear and uncluttered, and it is clear of eye candy, unlike Comcast's which looks like they spent more time making it pretty than making it useful.

Another thing I noticed is that some enterprising MBA type figured out a way to blend-in feature up-selling without making it intrusive. Some features are optional, but they are not shoved in your face, instead they are simply listed on the side or clearly marked as optional and available at an additional cost.

If Comcast's only competition is Verizon, and they keep treating new customers the way they have treated me since March, FIOS is going to be a monumental flop. It doesn't do them a god damn thing to have a technically superior solution of the business is not capable of handling the business part properly. When Comcast basically redid their whole cable network in this county, it was transparent to us. One day they simply told us that they have finished to redo everything with fiber to the curb, then offered us digital cable and cable modems.

Zero disruption.

When HD came, it was a question of switching digital cable boxes, again, zero disruption.

When voice came, they simply brought in a voice capable Arris cable modem. It took them about an hour, but most of that time was spent with the tech on the phone to his dispatcher trying to check the phone line. They did not even take out my old cable modem until weeks later.

Verizon doesn't want my hard-earned money

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Like Dolores Claiborne used to say: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you."

I guess since this is fool me thrice, it's the part when Dolores pushed her husband down the dry well.

They did it again: one more time they scheduled to come here and finally pull down the fiber into mine and the three condo units above.

Once again, they didn't show up.

This time I let myself believe they would do it, so I ordered FIOS again. My order was put on hold by the website, and was asked to call them directly.

This is a straight report of the calls I made to Verizon yesterday without any kind of success:

The report is missing a 40 minute call I made in the afternoon, where basically I had to redo my order.

Most of the time spent on the phone in the morning was either on hold or being bounced from office to office. My record for staying on hold was one hour.

So, what happened? Simple, their web ordering system allowed me to request my current landline number to be transferred to Verizon, something that they claim it shouldn't do.

Fine, I said, give me a TV-Internet bundle.

"No, I can't. Bundles must include phone service. You'll have to pay for both of them at regular price." Ouch. The idea was to drop the phone part of the order until the FIOS equipment was installed, then order an upgrade to the triple bundle. Still not the end of the world.

The problem is that my install date is next Tuesday, and the wiring guys did not show up on Friday, so I already know I won't be getting FIOS on Tuesday. Fuckers.

It really makes you wonder what is the point of competing against a company that is so big that they can afford to push around people that are gladly trying to commit to $150 worth of monthly services over 24 months. I wonder how many people are having the same problem?

By the way, here is the mystery of the wiring: I own a condo, and I am on the lowest floor. Our wiring goes top down, starting at the attic and running down each unit's HVAC closet. In order for them to give me FIOS, the fiber runs through my three neighbor's HVAC closet. This means that the condo association management company sends out a memo so all four owners know that a service person will enter their unit on some date for the specific purpose of pulling that cable. If they miss a date, they have to send another memo with enough notice so people can make arrangements in case they can't be around.

This of course could had been avoided when Verizon contracted to have all of our 300 units setup for FIOS. They paid for the work and did not bother to send somebody to make sure that the work was done.

Is MagicJack the new Sunrocket?

For those of you that missed that mess, Sunrocket was a VoIP service that promised unlimited domestic and long distance calls in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico for $200/year or less, depending on the promotion. Sometimes you even got a $50 cordless phone just for signing up. The service was provided through a black box, you could either plug it into your home network router, or you could plug your broadband connection into it and use it as a one-port router. I was one of the lucky ones: the day I signed up I was given two years of full service for $200.

The service was great, but it did not seem to take advantage of QoS, so I had to make sure that I was not doing a big download before I reached for the phone to make a work call. Once the connection was using more than 200K or so, it did not really like it and started sounding noisy (one of the basic reasons why my current boss hated that line so much).

Sunrocket crashed and burned. I got about 14 months of service out of my $200, still an exceptional value. I did not want to try another of those outfits, so I simply upgraded my Comcast account to a triple play, which got me a new cable modem with built-in VoIP and proper QoS. It is still a bit noisy, but only when the connection is about to get saturated. What I don't like about the Comcast phone service is that their ancillary services are actually inferior to what I had with Sunrocket. Their voice mail management sucks, and the call history is not always available.

During one of my many insomniac episodes, I was channel surfing when I noticed that there was an infomercial for MagicJack. The beauty of the infomercial is that it was designed to sell the product without really explaining how it works, they just showed you to plug it into your PC, plug a phone into it and use it.

Pure genius.

The other thing is that the MagicJack is much smaller than the Sunrocket device, it is just a little box with an USB plug. People understand when you try to sell them a little box and very basic instructions.

You don't have to be a nerd, just take this box, plug it in, and you are done.

Now I am starting to see reports that they are actually making a killing selling the damn things. Broadband reports started a thread today about the subject, and you can see some more activity at Google News. The funny thing is how very few news outlets are questioning their momentum and if the company can actually make money. I guess we'll see.

I would have been tempted, but my employer just handed me a Cisco IP phone and a Cisco 851 router, so as long as that works without disrupting my home network it will probably leave the Comcast phone to be used for personal calls only.

What the hell is wrong with Verizon?

Verizon spent millions wiring Fairfax County (VA) for FIOS, then spent god knows what wiring my condo complex (~ 300 units) so each unit would have the fiber running all the way into the wiring cabinet. Ordering FIOS would involve having a technician open a closet in your condo unit, slap two boxes in the wall and connect them to the fiber already there.

The problem is that they somehow forgot to check on the work. After spending so much money doing the wiring, they did not bother to check if their contractors did the work. Instead, they assumed it was done.

I ordered FIOS months ago and was asked to wait a month for installation. On install day, the technician figured out that the cable was never pulled down, and proceeded to bail out after giving me a number to re-schedule.

I called Verizon, which explained I would need to wait yet one more month. I hung up.

Months later, I got a memo from my condominium homeowner's association:

"Please be informed that Verizon will be on the premises on June 6 to finish wiring some buildings, including yours."

I thought awesome, now as soon as I see them finish, I can call and reschedule my install.

It did not work exactly like that. The wiring crew worked until lunch, then left. They never entered my building. So here I am, hating Comcast, but not being able to order FIOS.

An Open Letter to Verizon's FIOS division

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A month ago I decided that it was time to put Comcast to rest and move on to Verizon FIOS. There was nothing really wrong with Comcast, but the FIOS offers were simply unbelievable.

Yeah, I'm an idiot.

I ordered 15MB/15MB Internet service and was told that my delivery/installation appointment would be one month away. My appointment was today.

For the past month I was getting automated recordings from Verizon at least every week, reminding me of the installation date. I even took the afternoon off in advance, since I expected it to be distracting enough.

Then the shit hit the fan.

For starters, the installer was over an hour late. Once he showed up, he proved to me within minutes that he didn't know what the fuck he was doing. He insisted on going to my master bedroom closet, even after I told him three times that each of the 300+ units in our condo complex uses the HVAC closet as the communication lines tunnel, all lines enter each unit through the HVAC closet.

The installer got a little hostile, and insisted on checking the deployment box outside. Before I could open my patio door, he had walked out of the building and tried to walk around, which is really stupid since that had him walk 10 buildings down the street before the first opening that allows access to our back yards. Dumbass.

After some lecturing, he told me there was no way in hell he could get the job done. The fiber was in the attic, four stories above, and he would need access to each of the units above mine so he could pull the cable down. He also needed a power outlet in the HVAC closet, since there was none his solution was to run a power cord out of the closet, stapled to the god damn ceiling, across and into my living room and plugged into one of the outlets in my living room.

Dumbass x 2.

I offered him to get the engineering/facilities guys for help. After all, we have an agreement that allows them access to any unit for this kind of emergency. No, he replied, he would absolutely refuse to enter a unit unless the owner was present.

He ranted for a few minutes while Ivette was having the engineering guys get permission to enter each unit. She even got them to put a proper power outlet inside of the HVAC closet, something the Verizon guy did not think about. He left before she was back. Before he left he handed me a phone number to call to re-schedule.

It took one hour, and four calls, to make it to the point in which I could pick a new appointment.

"The next appointment we have available is April 27."

Let me get this straight: I had to prequalify to order this service. I ordered this service on March 1st, 2008, and I have to wait two months to have it installed because Verizon did not finish their cable runs as they should had?

Why the fuck do I get letters from Verizon every two weeks begging us to switch to FIOS?

I told her sorry, that's not going to work. Please cancel my order. It took another half hour, and two people, before I was done with the cancellation process.

Now, I am willing to allow the one-month wait to install the service, but them walking in here and deciding the place is not wired is just bullshit. If they know they are going to run a 4-6 hour service call (their estimate, not mine) then why the fuck can't they send a guy sometime in the four weeks before, to do a site survey?

How to do a timesaving FIOS site survey:

1. Hand a qualified tech the address for a potential installation.



2. Tech drives to the address, then asks the customer to allow him to walk through and look for the wiring cabinets, closets, etc.



3. Tech inspects the point in which FIOS hits the property and sees if there is any work left to do before he can do the end user installation.



4. Tech says goodbye and goes to the next address.

I imagine that for most inspections the tech can be done in 15 minutes or less. If he didn't find anything wrong, he can write a service note for the actual installer, to save him the hassle of figuring out where the cabinets and the entry point are located. If he finds something wrong, he has plenty of time to arrange for Verizon to fix whatever needs to be fixed.

Instead, we have technicians running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Assholes. And worse, they try to make it look like it is the customer's fault that there is a problem.

As soon as I was done with Verizon, I called Comcast and had them upgrade my Internet tier to 16MB/2MB, a $10 upgrade. This 16MB is before any speed boost. The funny thing is this is the third time in less than two years that I ask for the upgrade. For some reason they keep dropping it from my bill. The guy from Comcast was extremely nice, even after I told him that I almost deserted to FIOS.

"Uh, you don't want to do that."

Speed tests throughout the evening show me pulling 22MB/2.7MB. Fuck You, Verizon.

Questions for Verizon, not that I give a shit anymore:

1. Why does it take a month to schedule an installation in the wealthiest county in all of the United States?



2. Why are multi-unit dwelling deployments not going through some kind of quality assurance process? At the very least, Verizon should send somebody to make sure that their wiring contractors are deploying the right equipment.



3. Why not spend some money to train your customer support personnel?



4. Would somebody post a memo that just because a phone number is used for the account it doesn't mean the phone is a Verizon account?



5. Do you find it acceptable to have technicians that refuse to listen to knowledgeable customers? Especially when the customer has information that can make the installer's job easier?



6. How come Comcast has service appointment time guarantees and you don't? Comcast techs (at least here) are very timely and courteous. Your installer was sort of an asshole.



7. If a customer calls complaining about a fucked up installation about waiting for a month, is it wise to tell said customer that the next available appointment is almost a month away? Shouldn't this be a red flag situation to try to appease the customer by trying to right a wrong and come up with a better service appointment reschedule?



8. How come you guys spend so much money sending those begging letters without checking if the service is really available at that unit?



9. How come you guys spend so much money on marketing and can't afford a site inspection ahead of an installation appointment? I am guesstimating an expense of up to half a billable hour per each installation, which is already budgeted at 4 to 6 hours.



10. How come Verizon doesn't talk to condo associations and their engineering folks to preempt deployment issues at large condo complexes? All it takes is to send one engineer to visit each condo area and take a look at the possible floorplans. A recent college grad should have been able to come here and, in less than two hours, visit the three standard unit layouts, and maybe write a half-page cheat sheet to be used for any FIOS deployment to any of these 300+ units.

Test Shows Comcast’s HD Squeeze In Virginia - 3/27/2008 3:12:00 PM - Multichannel News

Comcast has said it can pack three high-definition signals into space typically used for two—without viewers noticing a drop in quality. But at least one viewer has.

A member of AVS Forum, a community site for audio/video enthusiasts, has posted the results of his comparison of the compression rates for 10 HD channels offered by Comcast and Verizon Communications’ FiOS TV in Northern Virginia.

The user, “bfdtv,” said his test showed Comcast is delivering certain MPEG-2 HD channels at bit rates as much as 28% lower than Verizon, resulting in lower-quality pictures.

[From Test Shows Comcast’s HD Squeeze In Virginia - 3/27/2008 3:12:00 PM - Multichannel News]

I can say from first hand experience that most HD channels in Comcast for Reston, VA don't look as good as one would expect. The problem is that sometimes the content is not exactly HD, instead it is up-converted, and many times this is done poorly. A&E is sometimes shown simply stretched to fit the screen.

There are always a couple of channels that look really nice most of the time. One of the local PBS affiliates always looks fantastic, and the network channels look fine as long as they are running proper content, like for example Heroes, House, Bones, etc.