Eric hates Verizon DSL. All he wanted to do is switch around his contract to save $8.00 a month.
verizon
How Long to Get a Human?
By 4.4.06
Here’s how long it’s taking to reach a human at various mobile phone carrier customer service lines today.
Verizon Fined For DC Graffiti Campaign
By 4.4.06
More guerrilla marketing via public vandalism: Verizon has been fined $1050 for spraying graffiti on Washington D.C. sidewalks advertising the Yellow Pages.
How Long Does it Take to Get a Human?
By 4.3.06
In the wake of purple ribbons, zombies and looking up words in the dictionary, we thought we might want to try something resembling journalism. To that end, we’ve started the Time to Human project.
Verizon Porks Leaving Customer One Last Time
By 3.31.06
It isn’t so much the incompetence, the obfuscation, the confusing pricing plans, the high prices for absolutely base minimum support. Those things annoy us here at the Consumerist, but at this point we’re almost stoically resigned to them as immutable physical laws. No, what really elicits the wailing and gnashing of teeth here is just how easy it would be for most companies to do the right thing and just how rarely they ever do.
Complaints: Verizon CSRs on Motorola V710
By 3.15.06
Business as usual for Verizon Customer Service Representative #1: a customer writes in, frustrated but polite, with a cogent complaint. When shopping for their phone, they were misleaded and/or lied to about the phone’s functionality by a Verizon employee. While the customer does not demand a refund, they are looking for some sort of acknowledgment that they have been wronged and want to know what Verizon is going to do in the future to prevent their sales reps from selling products based upon misleading and dishonest claims.
Razrs Pulled For Connectivity Glitches. No Blood Spilt. Sorry.
By 3.10.06
Everyone’s all about the Razr’s “cutting edge” HAR HAR HAR super-thin construction but it looks like they might’ve left something out in the design, as glitches are causing phonecalls to drop.
Worst Company in America: Tier 1 Results
By 3.6.06
Ladies and Gentlemen, your Tier 1 champions! Some no-brainers, squeakers and absolute pummeling.
Verizon Sells Bill Pay Histories To Creditors
By 3.3.06
New incentive to pay your phone bill on time, Verizon will now provide your bill payment histories to credit report agencies. The practice is becoming common among companies that issue monthly bills.
Skype Pinches the Pipeline
By 2.28.06
Skype is very slow right now. We’re trying to buy some credit to make phone calls. Perhaps the system is overtaxed as Skype 2.0 with video chat just came out. The ‘Loading…’ wheel keeps spinning ’round n’ round…until the pictured error message appears.
AT&T and Verizon CEOs Whine to Congress
By 2.16.06
We love whiny CEOs here at the Consumerist. There’s something special about men with net worths greater than most small nations complaining to Congress about unfairness that tickles our irony receptors. In this case, Ed Whitacre, CEO of AT&T (pictured) and Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications, traveled to the Capitol to bitch about the regulatory barriers-to-entry that telephone companies have when trying to get into the video delivery business—a business obviously dominated by cable companies.
Consumers Need Advice: Verizon Service “Upgrade” Brought Negative Changes
By 2.1.06
Reader Adam Higley wrote in to ask the throbbing hive-mind of Consumerist readers for their wide-ranging expertise in solving an issue he’s having with his Verizon DSL service, after the local exchange was upgraded from copper to fiber. Ever since that upgrade, he finds he is unable to access certain web sites and forums — specifically, a private forum he set up for friends. The problem appears to be that Verizon has blocked certain ports on their end which they are absolutely unwilling to open, citing their refusal as a security measure. Does anyone have any decent advice for Adam?
‘Broadband Scandal’: How the Phone Companies Screwed Us All
By 2.1.06
A new book called The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal claims to detail the variety of tax breaks and compensations offered to the Bell-spawned phone companies to build out our nation’s fiber-optic network—a network designed to bring 45-megabit per second connections into every home. We don’t know about you, but we are sending this text via a rickety old copper line, using the best 1-megabitish DSL connection Verizon has to offer.
Consumers Speak: Good Customer Service From Local Boys
By 1.30.06
John Strong (really!) writes in with a story of the all-too-rare case of good customer service:
Video Advertisements Coming to a Phone Near You
By 1.17.06
It looks like the relative ad-free environment of your cell phone is about to be populated with advertisments, reports The Times. Verizon and Sprint are said to be testing “short” video ads on their services in March.
Georgia Bill To Make Cell Carrier Contracts Less Restrictive
By 1.13.06
A Republican state senator in Georgia has filed a bill that aims to prohibit cell phone service providers from forcing customers to restart their contracts just to move to a new rate plan. The pandering doublespeak from the cellular service providers in this article is sickening.
Kristin Wallace, spokeswoman for Sprint Nextel. “In principle, Sprint Nextel believes the competitive wireless marketplace is serving its consumers well and that regulation of wireless service would be harmful to innovation and costly for consumers.”
Caran Smith, a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, said … “By limiting a carrier’s contract options, the state in effect is limiting a consumer’s flexibility to move to rate plans and take advantage of services that meet their wireless needs.”
We understand that to subsidize the cost of phones your carrier wants to lock you into a contract—really, we get it. But there’s no way to justify the inability to switch plans to suit your needs within your contract period. (Not to mention the inability to purchase your own phone independent of the carrier subsidy and use their service on a month-to-month basis without using pre-paid.) (Thanks, Erendira!)
How Verizon Stole Christmas
By 12.22.05
Verizon does something evil? Surely not our sweet, beatific megacorp! Yet that is the claim levied by the wicked town of Lonaconing, Maryland, whose annual Christmas lights were banned—for safety’s sake—by Verizon. Each year Lonaconing’s Christmas Light Decoration Committee would string their vine-like lights across the same poles used by Allegheny Power and Verizon to provide light and warmth to hundreds of poor children in the coal town.
”If a wire is hanging at 15 feet, a truck could snag it. It could snap a pole, and someone could get seriously injured,” Verizon spokeswoman Sandra Arnette said. ”We never said the town should not hang the lights. But safety is the first thing.”
The first thing is safety, Lonaconing, not your vile, pagan celebration! We would wish you coal in every stocking if we did not already imagine it would give your dwarvish children great joy to fondle each sooty treasure betwixt their stumpy mole fingers. And to put an inflatable Grinch balloon next to the Verizon office? Take your idolatry elsewhere, Lonaconing. We’ll have none of your craven imagery in this, the season of plastic, light-up Jesus.
