I see his problem... It's right there in the greeting. No one at Verizon matches that sentiment.

When did Godot show up?

@Belabras: I feel so uncultured, I had to google that...

My Advice: Invoice Verizon for your time.

Next, sign up for DSL from someplace like speakeasy.

I have since terminated my account and no one at Verizon has done anything to even attempt to rectify the situation.

Problem looks solved to me...

Sounds like Comcast techs. I get multiple days off work for each of their "appointments" only to have them cancel and not call me, lose the appointment, or come and somehow knock so softly that I never hear them even though I sit near the door during the allotted time. Not once have I ever got reimbursement for the lost vacation days or time wasted skipping work and calling them on the phone.

Wasn't there a similar issue raised on Consumerist a coupla weeks ago, the whole no record of appointments being made, repeatedly?

That's it? Took Verizon > 4 weeks to get my DSL service moved...NOT including the 3 weeks lead time I notified them of the move. I ended up having a friend with the county emergency management office call their Verizon contact and had them escalate it, saying I was one of their employees and absolutely needed it. Not sure how much longer it would have taken otherwise.

@Raekwon: I hear you. I can't get into too many specifics, but had a problem with Comcast dropping packets on a business account. Intermittent problem, so I can understand some time involved in tracking it down. To make a long story short, I spent >30 hrs on the phone with them over 4 weeks. Keep in mind that during this time our internet was down rather frequently. Eventually they did discover what I'd been telling them all along -- the problem was in their headend. I did get them to provide compensation, which is why I can't exactly get into specifics. I feel bad for those of you with residential accounts. I know they don't treat those the same. I can only imagine how bad that is.

I also had a small apt in Long Beach, and have had to wait ALL day for verizons DSL people. And when I tried to cancel, they made it so difficult, I kept getting charged for two months after.

oh, I forgot to m@FLConsumer: I forgot to mention that after I called the county guy up, I had working DSL service in < 12 hours.

John Paul I feel for you so much. I wanted Verizon when I moved to my house. I get my self install kit and the e-mail that says my DSL is setup. I plug in the kit and nothing. Verizon's answer "we setup you dsl signal on the wrong phone number" The rep says it will take 3-5 business days to redo the install. So i wait..6 business days later still not setup. Same answer. After another maaybe two weeks of that I called Comcast. I was setup the next day in about 2 hours with phone, internet, and tv.

I won't post about my personal Verizon service appointment hell yet again (not for a while, anyway), but I truly sympathize, John-Paul.

You'd think that someone in the company would understand that making customers burn through their vacation days is a poor business strategy.

I think they key is to get through to escalations. Once I got there I got an employee who actually seemed to care, and had the power to help me.

Instead of rescheduling days later for an appointment that Verizon didn't keep the first time, I got my DSL installed the next day. It was immensely frustrating though, and the unusually helpful escalations employee was the only thing keeping me from going through the roof.

@tgrwillki: Ever since SpeakEasy was purchased by BestBuy, I've been keeping a watchful eye on my service. So far, no problems. That doesn't mean I'll ever step into a Best Buy ever again, that place is dead to me.

I'm not sure quite what the OP needs "Installed." Verizon sends out a modem, or you plug in the modem from your old apartment, and your done.

How is it the the saying goes?
"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice..."

After the first missed appointment with the system claiming it was never made, I would have called back the next day after setting up the second one to make sure that it was indeed in the system, and write down the employee number of everyone I spoke with (in case I had to complain).

Only after getting confirmation would I wait for the installer the second time around.

1st time is an accident
2nd time is a coincidence
3rd time is sabotage...

They honestly don't want the OP as a customer, or they want him to get FiOS. For Internets cable is also go, so long as you don't have the Comcast Dumptruck which can only hold 250GB. Other cable providers use a series of tubes. I recommend the tubes over dumptruck.

@warf0x0r: go = *good

@dawime: I hate to "blame the victim" but I agree, definitely should have confirmed the appointment before taking time off work.

Not blaming anyone, but after the first time, wouldn't you call either a few hours later or the next day to verify the appointment was scheduled? I've only had to wait once for a service tech, and that was when a branch knocked down my old cable line and was blocking my driveway. I called within a half hour of the latest they said they would be when they still hadn't shown, and was told they had the appointment, but since it was a dead line, people who didn't have service were given priority. I explained I live on a main road across from a school, and if the line fell/drooped onto the road, it would be a BIG problem. By the next morning early AM, someone had re-attatched the line.

I just got Verizon FIOS Internet yesterday and it was a giant mess of incorrect orders and scheduling and etc. But my very very favorite part is the automated phone call I got a week ago to confirm my appointment. The road I live on is something like "Tuckahoe Drive", thus it's in their system as "Tuckahoe Dr." And their nifty text-to-speech system rendered that very clearly, sort of . . . "We are calling to confirm your installation at 123 Tuckahoe Doctor".

If you live in L.A., you have a lot of choices for internet service. There's no reason to be abused by Verizon when you have a choice.

I recommend L.A. Bridge: [www.labridge.com] . They're small but dedicated. If you have a problem, you'll be speaking directly to the person who is fixing it. No call center; no stomich-lining-eroding idiocy. I have no relationship with them other than being a happy customer, but I love those guys.

If L.A. Bridge doesn't work, look at dslreports.com for more providers.

Just some advice:
Insist on written confirmation via email or at a minimum get a confirmation number for the appointment. That way you'd have proof when you try to bill them or get help that they f-ed up.

Also: "fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me"

After they held you up the first time AND you took a day off from work you should get on the phone the day before to confirm there is an appointment after calmly explaining your situation (getting everyone's name in the process). If they screwed up that appointment, call every single day to confirm up until the appointment. Maybe even record the calls (if it is legal in your state) as confirmation.

*Not a lawyer, not legal advice*

While this is what I do nowdays too its kinda sad that it has become a "should".

Companies should be able to do their jobs and schedual appointments.
I personally fail to see how this happens when the telephone rep is supposedly booking the appointment when you are there on the phone.

@dawime: Fool me twice, shame on . . . uh . . . you can't get fooled again.

@Belabras: Half-past Guffman.

Again, its crazy that we have to act like these companies mothers and chase up on them to make sure they are doing their jobs.

Its not really acceptable in a resturant to place an order and then for them not to have the food come claiming they have no record of the order.

There are plenty of things one can do to make sure that appointments / orders are logged but the crux of the problem is incompetence.

Keep making appointments and never actually take work off...I would guess that would tick them off after they did show up a few times and you denied they showed up over and over again.

You have to explain to the company what will make you happy. You can't just ask for this to be rectified, you have to tell them how to rectify it.

Why not bill them? Vacation days have a very clear and specific value, that being equal to a day's pay.

How bout ask for a Saturday or an after 5 install time. I would never ever schedule an install during work hours where I would have to take time off. What I find odd is that you did not call to confirm that the next appointment was definitely scheduled after the first mistake. I had this happen to me on a Saturday over the summer with the cable guy. Called to find out where the guy was and was told the appointment was not scheduled. Got it rescheduled on the following Monday and the next day I called back to have them confirm it was actually scheduled.

Also know that companies do have Saturday and after 5 install times, you just have to be demanding and explain that it's impossible for you to be home from 8-5 on a week day. If they give you crap, say you are a doctor or something where life hangs in the balance.

When I signed up, Verizon had a self-install option for DSL. They mailed me a package containing a crappy modem, I activated it over the phone, and everything worked without me having to take off any time. It's easy enough for a moderately technical person so long as you know how to plug in wires and have a router already.

Or check dslreports.com for other options. We went w/ speakeasy for our business. No regrets there yet (in the last two months).

@VeeKaChu: at least he wasn't waiting to exhale.

Make sure you get a laptop and hang a cheap USB camera off of it and record who comes to your front door when you schedule an appointment with the clowns. That way when they say they came to your house and no one was there, you can catch them in the lie.

I used that with the Comcast guys and got 6 months free service.

ALWAYS call and reconfirm an appointment.
DR., lawyer, utility, job interview, dentist.

With utilities I'd call the day after making the appointment.
All the rest 2 days before the scheduled appointment.

One other MASSIVE tip.

Make all your checkup appointments in your month of birth.
Then when you have an emergency and are asked you'll remember the month at least.

You're welcome.

Ask for free service for one month, two months, part of a month, free upgrades, installation fees waived, or whatever you'd feel comfortable receiving as compensation.

If you really want compensation, then do not cancel. Only threaten you'll cancel if they won't meet your demands. And, if they don't, then cancel and walk away. That's business. You need to haggle with them, especially if what they offer is sub par, but all haggling is moot if you plan to walk away. Hell, why should they offer you anything if you've already refused their business?

Also, don't cancel with the intention of complaining and then trying again later. Leave your account open (unpaid as long as they neglect to actually install). Otherwise, you're just pushing the reset button and preparing for another possible letdown.

Bottom-line: let them know that if they don't set things right in a manner that you'll agree to, you'll leave and you'll make it well known how they treated you. And actually follow through if they try to call your bluff.

When I signed up with Verizon, I did a self-install, but they said they needed to send someone to the building to turn on a switch or something... I got the same runaround for ~ a month, and FINALLY someone figured out that they were scheduling an "install" tech, except that what they needed to schedule was a different kind of "mr. fix-it" tech, and every time they scheduled an "install" tech, the computer would determine there was no working line to the apartment and cancel the "install" tech. On top of that, cone of the CSRs I spoke to seemed to be able to grasp the concept of dry loop DSL and kept insisting on my needing a land phone line, which I neither had nor wanted.

Thankfully, when I had to move before my contract was up, they royally messed up the disconnect and forgot to charge me the early termination fee, so I feel like I got one over on them in the end.

I had DSL for a year and had a terrible time trying to cancel. I spoke to multiple departments, including retention/cancellation three times. The other departments had a record of my trouble ticket, but each time I clearly confirmed the cancellation with the retentions dept, they never made any record of the cancellation or even the call itself!

Then when I would call them back they would tell me I was the one not following through with the cancellation because they were not seeing call records by the retentions dept. I don't know how their incentive system works, but I'm quite sure retentions completely ignored my cancellation requests and then noted that they saved a customer.

I eventually escalated and was successful with termination on the 5th or 6th call, but it was so frustrating to have to keep calling back and making sure they were doing their damn job.

@tgrwillki:

Many apartments have static contracts with specific service providers. Even if those providers do service your building, some of their services could be unavailable.

My apartment is in a developed Chicago suburb, right across the street from a very large community college (College of DuPage). We receive full service from Comcast and Wide Open West cable providers: TV, Internet, and phone. AT&T only offers land-line phone service. NO Internet. NO U-Verse. Other DSL Internet providers such as Earthlink don't offer service to my location either.

So you see, even when equipment and geographical distance is not an issue, some people are just screwed by politics and lack of service area penetration.

Another question -- why did the OP have to wait 2 hours on hold for Verizon to figure out he had no appt.? How exactly does it take 2 hours to look up that info?

Did they have to walk down to the 4th level of hell where they store the appt. records, look through the card catalog and venture into the stacks to find the appt. record?

@NinjaPoo: I agree, maybe I should have clarified that while he should have called to confirm, he shouldn't have had to. I think the phone reps actually just outright lie quite a bit to try to make you happy and get you off the phone. If I remember right, Verizon had some of the most draconian rules in their call centers. This case does seem a bit extreme, though; most of the time I've been lied to, it's about pricing, or with AT&T, cashback (that's really an impressive scam they've got going).

@Ronin-Democrat: Can we tone down the caps, and the smugness please?

I wait for nobody.

At least where I live, phone and cable (and any internet service using those wires) are regulated utilities. That means there is a Public Utility Commission whose job it is to police the operating agreements of phone and cable companies. Thanks to the fabulous job Comcast did in my locale, all communications companies in the jurisdiction are subject to legally enforceable performance standards governing their customer service.

That means if it takes your internet provider 2 hours to answer the phone, or if they blow off three appointments, the PUC wants to hear about it. The OP may very well have a similar regulatory office where they live. If so, complaining to Verizon in writing, and copying the PUC on the letter or email, has a great chance of getting your grievance taken seriously.

@warf0x0r: OP will get the same, or worse, customer service from FiOS. I speak from experience. It was an utter nightmare, and 6 months later I'm still getting bills for a service I canceled after spending 30+ hours trying to get my FiOS to work reliably.

I would send them an invoice for your time.

Had the same exact problem. Made several appointments and 3 weeks later still didn't have service. I called Time Warner and they came out the next day. As a result, will never consider Verizon for any service.

I wonder why Verizon is commonly referred to as the "Evil Empire" by consumers .... ???

I've been in this exact situation lately. Waiting on them to come fix my office phone at home, which had a horrible static problem.

Anyways, I made an appointment (fox SIX days later) and they didn't show up. When I called the next day to find out why, they indicated that the technician had closed the ticket.

This happened twice before I finally got them to actually show up. Once they did, the problem was fixed within a half hour.

Send an e-mail to ivan.g.seidenberg@verizon.com. He is the CEO. Their executive customer service department is very good and will fix things right away. Good luck.

@pmcpa2: Thats how it was for me with Comcraptic service when I was forced to have it installed in the new apt.. just go pick up the modem and plug it in. But when I had U-verse at the old apartment (oh i miss thee so...), they REQUIRED an installation and flat-out refused to send me anything related to U-verse for self install.

Maybe Verizon is doing something similar.