More than two years ago, Consumerist reader Stephen spotted a Verizon FiOS box tacked to the side of his neighbor’s house. The two properties share a driveway and a telephone pole, so it should be no problem to get his house hooked up for FiOS service, right? Of course not.

“I checked the Verizon website for availability and was told that my address was not available,” Stephen tells Consumerist. He figured he would wait a couple months and check back. But nope, still unavailable.

So he called Verizon and asked why his neighbor could get FiOS but he couldn’t. A rep told him that it “sounds like your address is not in the database,” and promised to send out an engineer and give him a call back within 48 hours.

No one came, no one called. Stephen tried again. Of course, since he wasn’t yet a customer, there was no record of his original call. So he repeated the same conversation, the same promises were made and no one ever called him back.

Stephen ultimately repeated this weary-go-round three more times before, on his sixth call, someone finally told him that FiOS would be unavailable until a “build out” was completed in October of 2010.

He gave them until November 2010 before trying again. Nothing. Call #8 in spring 2011 yielded no results, nor did the ninth call.

Stephen took to the FiOS forums and vented his frustration. This finally resulted in a call from a Verizon rep with good news: Service is now available to his house!

He set up an appointment and then, the day before he’s finally supposed to get FiOS, Verizon went on strike.

When the strike finally ended, he set up a second appointment for early September.
“The FiOS installer shows up on time. My landlord is there, they discuss installing it in the basement and I’m told that more work needs to be done and they will schedule it with my landlord within 30 days,” Stephen says. “Three weeks later I get a notification that my FiOS order has been canceled.”

Let’s just let Stephen take it from here:

I place an order through the website again (now losing the $150 promotion of my last order). Order is set for a month out. I call Verizon for the 10th time. Let them know that there was a problem last time and want to make sure things go smoothly. Told I will be called back by the end of the day….nothing… Call 11th time. Told I will be called back by the end of the day…. not called back.

Called the 12th time. Told by agent that “more work” needs to be done and he has no idea when it’s going to happen, but FiOS is not available at my address.

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